Maceo Montoya’s latest release, Imaginative Possibilities: Conversations with Twenty-First-Century Latinx Writers (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024), co-authored with poet Javier O. Huerta, has won an American Book Award.
The American Book Awards, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation, celebrates the full spectrum of American literary achievement. The awards recognize this excellence without restrictions and limitations, categories or quotas.
Professor Montoya is a writer and visual artist teaching in the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies, the Department of English and the Creative Writing Program, all in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.
In Imaginative Possibilities, Montoya and Huerta interview Latinx authors and explore their writing processes, aesthetics, creative trajectories and place within the larger body of Latinx literature. The interviews address artistic, professional and cultural issues including the building of intellectual communities, the writing and publication process, and the practical economics of making a living.
Montoya has published four works of fiction, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Press, 2010), The Deportation of Wopper Barraza (University of New Mexico Press, 2014), You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories (University of New Mexico Press, 2015), and Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces (University of Nevada Press, 2021). In addition to Imaginative Possibilities, he has published two works of nonfiction, Letters to the Poet from His Brother (Copilot Press, 2014), and Chicano Movement for Beginners (2016), which he also illustrated.
Montoya’s paintings, drawings and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications around the world. He is also the editor of Huizache, a magazine dedicated to highlighting voices from the Southwest, the West and Latinx community.
Montoya comes from a family of artists, including his father Malaquias Montoya, a major figure in Chicano Art and a professor emeritus in the Department of Chicana/o/x at UC Davis. His late brother, poet Andrés Montoya, also won an American Book Award.
Previous faculty who’ve received American Book Awards include Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder, professor emeritus of English, and Sandra Gilbert, professor emerita of English.
The winners of the 46th annual American Book Awards will be recognized on Sunday, Oct. 26, at UC Berkeley. Read the full list of winners and find out more here.
This year's Campus Community Book Project selection, Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora, is also an American Book Award winner. Read more about the 2025-2026 pick and related activities at UC Davis News.
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