Denise Chávez: “Her family loved to tell stories, and she acknowledges her roots in the oral storytelling tradition.”

From The Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of Denise Chávez, born in 1948 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a town 40 miles from the Mexican border. After earning two master’s degrees, she went to work on her first novel, the draft of which was 1,200 pages. She and her editor whittled it down to 456 pages, and the resulting book, Face of an Angel, was published in 1994 to high critical acclaim. The novel includes excerpts from the diary of the protagonist, who is a career waitress, as well as a waitress etiquette and philosophy manual. Chávez herself had spent more than 30 years waiting tables.

She grew up in a family that loved to tell stories, and she acknowledges her roots in the oral storytelling tradition, calling herself a “performance writer.” In her writing, she also incorporates her bilingual background, and she does not italicize Spanish words in her works, which has caused conflicts with editors. . . .

Chávez has written several plays, two novels (Face of an Angel, 1994) and (Loving Pedro Infante, 2001), and a children’s book (The Woman Who Knew the Language of Animals, 1992). She also wrote a memoir with recipes, A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food, and Culture (2006). She is the founder and director of the annual Border Book Festival in Las Cruces.