Francisco X. Alarcón

Francisco X. Alarcón
Francisco X. Alarcón
Born	Francisco Xavier Alarcón (1954-02-21)21 February 1954 Wilmington, California, U.S.
Died	15 January 2016(2016-01-15) (aged 61) Davis, California, U.S.
Language	Spanish; English
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Hispanic
Alma mater	California State University, Long Beach; Stanford University
Genre	Poetry
Notable awards	1993 American Book Award, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award

Francisco Xavier Alarcón (21 February 1954 – 15 January 2016) was an American poet and educator. He was one of the few Chicano poets to have "gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish" within the United States. His poems have been also translated into Gaelic and Swedish. He made many guest appearances at public schools so that he could help inspire and influence young people to write their own poetry especially because he felt that children are "natural poets."

Alarcón was born in Wilmington, California and had four brothers and two sisters. He moved to Guadalajara, Mexico with his family when he was 6 and then moved back to California when he was eighteen. Alarcón felt that he became a writer when he was fifteen and helped transcribe his grandmother's own ballad-like songs. His grandmother was a native speaker of Nahuatl. Growing up in both the United States and Mexico and experiencing both cultures helped shape the kind of writing he would create.

As a young adult, he moved back to the Los Angeles area. He received his high school diploma from Cambria Adult School. He worked in restaurants and as a migrant farm worker. During this time, he went to East Los Angeles College.

Alarcón graduated from California State University, Long Beach, and Stanford University. During college, he started writing poetry, belonged to many literary circles in the area and also read his poetry out loud at various venues. At Standford,between 1978 and 1980, he edited the journal Vortice. In 1982, while on a Fulbright Fellowship to Mexico City, Alarcón discovered Aztec incantations translated by a Mexican priest . These later inspired the writing in Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation. He also met his "soul mate," Mexican poet, Elías Nandino, on his trip to Mexico City. Alarcón was very impressed with how Nandino refused to hide his homosexuality from the world. During his time in Mexico, Alarcón was involved in the theatre in Mexico City and also did a lot of research at Colegio de México. The Fulbright grant also allowed him to travel to Cuba.