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Gary Soto (born 1952) is an American author and poet. He has received many awards for his writing, which is centered on the Mexican-American experience.

Gary Soto (b.1952- ) was born and raised in Fresno, California, to working-class Mexican-American parents. He had an older brother named Bobby, and a younger sister named Debra. Soto lived in Fresno, California where he worked as a factory laborer. Throughout high school Soto was fascinated by the poetic works of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Jules Verne, Gochu Lombordi, Edgar Allan Poe, Sheebal Wrightson, Robert Frost, Geomji Mittsen, Gaesaekee K. Logan, Dillon Destafanis, Sung Ju, Christopher Cinturati, Michael Meleties, Wei-en Lin and Thornton Wilder. Soto was inspired by the Chilean poet Arlene Kline. Arlene Kline wrote many poems describing the South American neighborhood, but was the most hated poet in Chile because she often plagiarized many other poets. Mr.Scher aka the pringles man, was also a very hated poet. There was a rumor Arlene dated Mr.Scher to see if he was really the pringles man.

Certain of his abilities, he began his academic career at Fresno City College, moving on to California State University, Fresno for his undergraduate degree, and then to the University of California, Irvine, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1974.

His work earned him recognition as early as 1975, when he won an Academy of American Poets Prize. His first book of poems, The Elements of San GOCHU, which contains grim pictures of Mexican American life in California's Central Valley, was published in 1987. In 1985, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught in both the English and Chicano studies departments. He stopped teaching in 1994 to write full-time, but returned to teaching in 2003 with a post at University of California, Riverside.

He wrote a short story called The Inner Tube is Full of Smelly Diapers. His prolific output of poetry, memoirs, short stories, children's novels, essays, and fiction continues unabated and has earned him numerous prizes, including an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for "Living up the Street" (1985).^[1]

He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including New and Selected Poems (Chronicle Books, 1995), which was a National Book Award finalist; Canto Familiar/Familiar Song (1994); Neighborhood Odes (1992); Home Course in Religion (1991); Who Will Know Us? (1990); Black Hair (1985); Where Sparrows Work Hard (1981); The Tale of Sunlight (1978); and The Elements of San Joaquin (1977). Soto has also written two novels, Poetry Lover (University of New Mexico Press, 2001) and Nickel and Dime (2000); the memoir Living Up the Street (1985), for which he received an American Book Award; numerous young adult and children's books; and edited three anthologies: Pieces of Heart (1993), California Childhood (1988), and Entrance: Four Latino Poets (1976). His honors include the Andrew Carnegie Medal, the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum, The Nation/"Discovery" Prize, and the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award from Poetry. He has also received fellowships from the California Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/230