Nicolás Kanellos

Nicolás Kanellos, the Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston, is the founder and director of the nation’s oldest and largest, non-profit publisher of Hispanic literature in the United States, Arte Público Press. He is also the director of a major national research program, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage of the United States, which aims to identify, preserve, study and make accessible tens of thousands of Latino literary documents that were written from the colonial period to 1960 in the area that has become the United States.

The author of numerous award-winning books on Hispanic cultural history, Dr. Kanellos is the recipient of the 1996 Denali Press Award of the American Library Association, the 1989 American Book Award in the Publisher/Editor category, the 1988 Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature presented by the White House, as well as various fellowships and other recognitions. His monograph, A History of Hispanic Theater in the United States: Origins to 1940 (1990), received three book awards, including that of the Southwest Council on Latin American Studies. His Hispanic Literature of the United States: A Comprehensive Reference (2005) was named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice. In 2008, he was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy for Arts and Science