Luis Alberto Urrea will visit Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas Campus and will hold a public lecture 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. on October 15 in the Reynolds and W. Walker Hall Auditoriums. View a complete schedule of events online, or download a pdf poster or pdf schedule.
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(pronounced "oo-Ray-ah"), 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph.
Born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea has published extensively in all the major genres and is currently published by Little, Brown and Company. The critically acclaimed author of 11 books, Urrea is an award-winning poet and essayist. The Devil's Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. A national best-seller, The Devil's Highway was also named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Kansas City Star and many other publications.
Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, a place called the Devil's Highway. Fathers and sons, brothers and strangers, entered a desert so harsh and desolate that even the Border Patrol is afraid to travel through it.
For hundreds of years, men have tried to conquer this land, and for hundreds of years the desert has stolen their souls and swallowed their blood. Along the Devil's Highway, days are so hot that dead bodies naturally mummify almost immediately. And that May, twenty-six men went in. Twelve came back out.
Luis Alberto Urrea tells the story of this modern odyssey.
Learn more about the experience described in the book with an interactive map.
A group of faculty, staff, and community liaisons have worked on developing the University of Arkansas' first all-campus, all-community book read starting this academic year 2009-2010. Students, faculty, and staff at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Public Library patrons, and book lovers throughout Northwest Arkansas will read Devil's Highway and the author will visit Fayetteville for a series of events focusing on issues raised in this award-winning book.