Famous Hispanic Authors

Famous Hispanics
Updated July 28, 2021 31.1K views42 items

This is a list of famous Hispanic and Latino authors. These are some of the most well-known Mexican-American authors, writers, and poets. Mexican American culture is robust and full of history, with a focus on family. The people on this list vary in status, from Mexican American heroes and Latino/a heroes to beloved indie writers as well. 

There are beloved Chicano writers and poets below, such as Francisco X. Alarcón. There are also Latino authors and famous Hispanic writers like Diana Gabaldon, Gary Soto, and Sandra Cisneros. Luis Alberto Urrea is one of the famous Mexican American poets that you might recognize. You may also be familiar with other stars on this famous Hispanic poets and writers list, such as Rudolpho Anaya, Pat Mora, and Ana Castillo. 

Learn more about these famous Hispanic writers, poets, and authors below. 

Ranked by
  • Diana Gabaldon

    Diana Gabaldon

    Outlander, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Voyager
    • Birthplace: Williams, Arizona, USA
    Diana J. Gabaldon (; born January 11, 1952) is an American author, known for the Outlander series of novels. Her books merge multiple genres, featuring elements of historical fiction, romance, mystery, adventure and science fiction/fantasy. A television adaptation of the Outlander novels premiered on Starz in 2014.
  • Gary Soto

    Gary Soto

    Help Wanted, Cruzando El Pacfico, Baseball in April and Other Stories
    • Birthplace: Fresno, California
    Gary Anthony Soto (born April 12, 1952) is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.
  • Sandra Cisneros

    Sandra Cisneros

    The House on Mango Street, Caramelo, Hairs/Pelitos
    • Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, USA
    Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel The House on Mango Street (1984) and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros herself attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, was awarded one of 25 new Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowships in 2017, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.Cisneros's early life provided many experiences she would later draw on as a writer: she grew up as the only daughter in a family of six brothers, which often made her feel isolated, and the constant migration of her family between Mexico and the United States instilled in her the sense of "always straddling two countries ... but not belonging to either culture." Cisneros's work deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring the challenges of being caught between Mexican and Anglo-American cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes present in both these cultures, and experiencing poverty. For her insightful social critique and powerful prose style, Cisneros has achieved recognition far beyond Chicano and Latino communities, to the extent that The House on Mango Street has been translated worldwide and is taught in American classrooms as a coming-of-age novel.Cisneros has held a variety of professional positions, working as a teacher, a counselor, a college recruiter, a poet-in-the-schools, and an arts administrator, and has maintained a strong commitment to community and literary causes. In 1998 she established the Macondo Writers Workshop, which provides socially conscious workshops for writers, and in 2000 she founded the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation, which awards talented writers connected to Texas. Cisneros currently resides in Mexico.
  • Francisco X. Alarcón

    Francisco X. Alarcón

    No Golden Gate for Us, Cuerpo En Llamas, Laughing Tomatoes And Other Spring Poems
    • Birthplace: Wilmington, Los Angeles, California
    Francisco Xavier Alarcón (21 February 1954 – 15 January 2016) was a Chicano poet and educator. He was one of the few Chicano poets to have "gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish" within the United States. His poems have been also translated into Irish and Swedish. He made many guest appearances at public schools so that he could help inspire and influence young people to write their own poetry especially because he felt that children are "natural poets."
  • Jimmy Santiago Baca

    Jimmy Santiago Baca

    Bound by Honor, A Place to Stand, Martín & Meditations on the South Valley
    • Birthplace: Santa Fe, New Mexico
    Jimmy Santiago Baca (born January 2, 1952 in Santa Fe, New Mexico) is a Chicano-American poet and writer.
  • Juan Felipe Herrera

    Juan Felipe Herrera

    Thunderweavers, Face Games, Half of the World in Light
    • Birthplace: Fowler, California
    Juan Felipe Herrera (born December 27, 1948) is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017.Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work, such as the children's book Calling the Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award in 1997. Community and art have always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-1970s, when he was director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, an occupied water tank in Balboa Park that had been converted into an arts space for the community.Herrera’s publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children, with twenty-one books in total in the last decade. His 2007 volume 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007 contains texts in both Spanish and English that examine the cultural hybridity that "revolve around questions of identity" on the U.S.-Mexico border. Herrera was awarded the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for Half the World in Light. In 2012, he was appointed California Poet Laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown.In 2011, Herrera was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2015, Herrera was appointed as the nation's first Chicana or Chicano poet laureate.On June 11, 2016, Herrera was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Oregon State University.