Born in San Francisco, California to Native American and Mexican parents, LORNA DEE CERVANTES (1954—) began writing poetry as a child and won the American Book Award for her first volume, Emplumada (1981). Its poems, which detailed her coming-of-age as a writer and her complex relationship to her heritage, heralded the arrival of a major new Chicana voice. Subsequent work has explored her identity as a feminist and the politics of personal interactions. Long active as an editor and publisher, Cervantes is a professor at the University of Colorado.