Vince Gotera

Vince Gotera
The Man with the Blue Guitar blog, June 2009.
Born	June 20, 1952 San Francisco, California, United States
Occupation	Poet, writer, critic, professor
Nationality	American
Genre	poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, literary criticism

Vince Gotera (/ɡoʊˈtɛrə/; born June 20, 1952) is an American poet and writer, best known as Editor of the North American Review. In 1996, Nick Carbó called him a "leading Filipino-American poet of this generation"; later, in 2004, Carbó described him as "one of the leading Asian American poets ... willing to take a stance against American imperialism."

Born Vicente Ferrer Gotera on June 20, 1952, to Candida Fajardo Gotera and Martin Avila Gotera, immigrants from the Philippines. He was born and raised in San Francisco, but spent some time as a child in the Philippines.

In 1971, Gotera started college at Stanford University. Having a draft lottery number of 30, Gotera served in the US Army during the Vietnam War (1972–1975). After returning to college, he earned an A.A. in General Studies from City College of San Francisco (1977), a B.A. in English from Stanford (1979), and then an M.A. in English (American Literature) from San Francisco State University (1981). Gotera then moved to Indiana University, where he earned an M.F.A. in poetry (1989) and a joint (or double-major) PhD in English and in American Studies (1992).

Since 1995, Gotera has taught at the University of Northern Iowa, where he is a professor of English specializing in creative writing (both poetry and fiction) and multicultural American literature. He also taught at Humboldt State University from 1989 to 1995. Other institutions where he has taught include Indiana University, Grinnell College, and Wartburg College. He also frequently teaches creative writing at the annual Iowa Summer Writing Festival sponsored by the University of Iowa.