Tim Z. Hernandez

Born in Dinuba, California, Hernandez was raised in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California, where he lived in predominantly farm-worker communities in the agricultural region. His family roots are in Texas, New Mexico, and East Los Angeles. Early in his life, Hernandez's parents were migrant farmworkers, following the seasons across the southwest. It was during this time on the road that he developed an interest in travel and stories.[1]

In his adolescent years, Hernandez was immersed in acting and visual arts. As a teenager, he focused mainly on painting. He met the artist Joseph De La Cruz in 1990 and began his first apprenticeship at the age of 16. In 1999, he apprenticed with bay area muralist Juana Alicia on a traditional fresco mural located at the San Francisco International Airport.[1]

In the mid 1990s Hernandez studied poetry and performance at CSU Long Beach under the tutelage of Juan Felipe Herrera. Here he also studied with poets, June Jordan, Li Young Lee, and performance artists such Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Commedia dell'arte.

He earned his B.A. degree in Writing & Literature from the first accredited Buddhist institute in the west, Naropa University. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing & Literature from Bennington College in Vermont. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Texas El Paso's Bilingual M.F.A. Creative Writing program.[2]

Hernandez's performances have been featured at the Getty Center, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Dixon Experimental Theater in NYC, The Loft Literary Center, Intersection for the Arts, Stanford University, and at the Jack Kerouac School, among other venues. In 2000 he was commissioned by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the National Fanny Mae Foundation to write and perform an original one-man show on homelessness and poverty. From 2006 through 2011 he has worked with Poets & Writers Inc. and the California Center for the Book at UCLA, offering writing workshops to marginalized communities across the state of California.[3]

In March 2013, NPR hosted Hernandez, in regards to a new rendition of the song Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos). With the help of Lance Canales Lance Canales & The Flood, whose parents were also migrant farmworkers, the two released a version of the song that included the names of those who perished in the 1948 Los Gatos plane crash. After months of research, Hernandez was able to discover the identities of these people within the Fresno County Hall of Records, in Fresno, CA. As stated by Hernandez, within this interview,[4]

It all comes down to the same idea of why it matters that their names are even brought up. You know, here we are, 65 years later. I mean, at the end of the day - right? - Our names are really what represent who we are. They're our stamp on the fact that we've existed here, at one point. And obviously, too, names are about lineage - where we come from, the culture we come from, who we are.[4]

Later in 2013, Hernandez's research of the 1948 Los Gatos plane crash culminated in his successful drive to provide a proper monument at the mass grave of the 28 migrant farmworkers who perished nearly nameless, which had inspired the song Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).[5] He has since published a related non-fiction book, All They Will Call You.[6]

• 2014 Colorado Book Award, Poetry for "Natural Takeover of Small Things"
• 2014 International Latino Book Award, Historical Fiction for "Mañana Means Heaven"
• 2013 Split this Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, Finalist[7]
• 2011 New American Poets honor, Poetry Society of America
• 2011 El Premio Aztlan Literary Prize for Breathing, In Dust
• 2006 American Book Award for Skin Tax
• 2006 Zora Neal Hurston Award for Skin Tax
• 2003 James Duval Phelan Award, San Francisco Foundation, "Skin Tax"
• 2010 California Book Award Finalist, "Breathing, In Dust"

Non-Fiction

• All They Will Call You (Documentary Novel, University of Arizona Press, 2017)

Fiction

• Mañana Means Heaven (Historical Fiction, University of Arizona Press, 2013)
• Breathing, In Dust (Fiction, Texas Tech University Press, 2010)

• "ON THE PAGE, ON THE STAGE", Fresno Famous, sylvia savala, November 27, 2006