April 7: Hector Tobar, "Immmigration, the American City, and American Literature"

Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer-prize winning writer and journalist for the Los Angeles Times. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he was raised in East Hollywood and has worked as a journalist for the LA Times since the 1980s, most recently serving as The Times’ Bureau Chief in Mexico City and Buenos Aires. He is the author of two outstanding books, The Tattooed Solider (1998), a finalist for the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, and Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States (2006). Tobar is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of California, Irvine. At this presentation, he will read from his forthcoming novel The Barbarian Nurseries (FSG, Sept. 2011) as well as talk about immigration in the United States.

This presentation is free and open to the general public. The talk will be in English. For more information, please contact Maria Vargas at mvargas5@umd.edu.