User:Marlinagtz/sandbox

Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you? Everything in the article is relevant; all the information presented is either about Urrea and his work as a writer.

Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

The article is very neutral and fact based. There is no framing of information or priming of the audience in the writing.

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

The viewpoints of book critics are not represented. No viewpoints are overrepresented.

Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

All but three links work.However, when there are only ten sources three has a more significant value. Those links that did work do support the claims made in the article.

Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

All facts are referred with an appropriate reliable reference. Sources of information include a newspaper article, an article from a University covering a speaking event held at their campus in which Urrea was present, the author's website, and two interviews with Urrea. Although wikipedia does not recommend using sources that are composed by the subject the website is very neutral and was used for facts not opinions.

What the article needs:

Luis Alberto Urrea is a notable author however his wikipedia page is lacking more information about what is most important about him, his books. I would like to add a “Writing” section dedicated to his books with the title and short description of each of his books. Number of copies sold for his most popular books would also be interesting information to add to his page. A “Criticism” section should also be added as it is important for achieving a more well rounded page for an author.

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Luis Alberto Urrea (born 1955 in Tijuana, Mexico) is an award winning Mexican American poet, novelist, and essayist. Urrea uses his multiculturalism to express themes of love, family, adolescence, and ethnic diversity in his poetry and novels. He is appreciated in the world of literature for his unique storytelling style.

Life

Urrea is the son of a Mexican father and an American mother; he was born on August 20 1955 in Tijuana Mexico. In 1958 the family moved to Logan Heights in South San Diego. He attended the University of California, San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing in 1977. Urrea completed his graduate studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

After serving as a relief worker in Tijuana, he worked as a teachers aid in the Chicano Studies department in San Diego's Mesa College in 1978. He also worked as a film extra and columnist-editor-cartoonist for several publications. In June 1982 Urrea moved to Boston where he taught expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard University. He has also taught at Massachusetts Bay Community College, and the University of Colorado, and he was the writer in residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Urrea married in 1987, and later divorced in 1993. In 1994, Urrea's first novel, In Search of Snow, was published.

Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, Illinois, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In two heavily researched historical novels, The Hummingbird's Daughter and Queen of America, Urrea tells the story of his great-aunt, Teresita Urrea, who was known as "The Saint of Cabora" and "The Mexican Joan of Arc".

Awards

Urrea's first book, Across the Wire, was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the Christopher Award in 1993.

In 1994, he won the Colorado Book Award in poetry for The Fever of Being as well as the Western States Book Award in poetry. He was also included in The 1996 Best American Poetry collection.

In 1999, Urrea won an American Book Award for his memoir, Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life.

His book of short stories, Six Kinds of Sky, was named the 2002 small-press Book of the Year in fiction by the editors of ForeWord magazine.

In 2000, he was voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame following the publication of Vatos.

The Devil's Highway won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award, the Border Regional Library Association's Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and for the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. It was also optioned for a film by CDI Producciones. The book was adopted as the 2010 One Book for Sac State

His short story "Amapola", which can be found in Pheonix Noir edited by Patrick Millikin and Urrea's own The Water Musuem, won the Edgar Award in 2010 for best mystery short story.

Criticism

Mythiligi G. Rao of the New York Times compares both of Urrea's heavily researched novels in an article titled "The Most Dangerous Girl in Mexico goes to America"; Rao writes, " Where 'The Hummingbird’s Daughter' was driven by an otherworldly mysticism and the call of fate, its sequel is largely occupied with the ordinary troubles of mortal life". Stacey D'Erasmo, also from the New York Times has reviewed Urrea's novel "The Hummingbird's Daughter". Praising him for his literature style she writes, "The style that Urrea has adopted to tell Teresita's—and Mexico's—story [is]...simultaneously dreamy, telegraphic and quietly lyrical. Like a vast mural, the book displays a huge cast of workers, whores, cowboys, rich men, bandits and saints while simultaneously making them seem to float on the page". Joanne Omang, from the Washington Post writes, "The Hummingbird's Daughter is paced beautifully, inexorable and slow-seeming as life itself. The daily trivia of Teresita's childhood is as fascinating as the punctuations of amazements, beauties and horrors". Luis Alberto Urrea is also admired by Publisher's Weekly Sandra Dijkstra; she writes, "His brilliant prose is saturated with the cadences and insights of Latin-American magical realism and tempered by his exacting reporter's eye and extensive historical investigation".

Bibliography

Poetry

• The Fever of Being. West End Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-931122-78-1.
• Ghost Sickness. Cinco Puntos Press. 1997. ISBN 978-0-938317-30-2.
• Vatos. José Galvez, Josae Galvez (photog.). Cinco Puntos Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-938317-52-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• "Walking Backwards in thee Dark". Virginia Quarterly Review. Spring 2007.

Short Stories

• Six Kinds of Sky. Cinco Puntos Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-938317-63-0.
• The Water Museum. Little, Brown and Company. 2015. ISBN 978-0316334372

Novels

• In Search of Snow. University of Arizona Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-8165-2015-2.
• The Hummingbird's Daughter. Little, Brown and Company. 2005. ISBN 978-0-316-74546-8.
• Into the Beautiful North. Little, Brown and Company. 2009. ISBN 978-0-316-02527-0.
• Queen of America. Little, Brown and Company. 2011. ISBN 978-0-316-15486-4.

Memoirs

• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks. University of Arizona Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-8165-1866-1.
• Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life. University of Arizona Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0-8165-2270-5.

Non-Fiction

• Across the wire: life and hard times on the Mexican border. John Lueders-Booth (photog.). Anchor Books. 1993. ISBN 978-0-385-42530-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• By the Lake of Sleeping Children. Anchor Books. 1996. ISBN 978-0-385-48419-0.
• The Devil's Highway. Little, Brown and Company. 2004. ISBN 978-0-316-74671-7.
• Tijuana Book of the Dead. Soft Skull Press. 2015. ISBN 978-1619024823

Interviews

• "On Standing at Neruda's Tomb: An interview with Martín Espada". Poetry Foundation. 2006.