Meatballs for the People

Gary Soto (born in Fresno, California) is a poet and author who has written extensively about the lives of Mexican Americans in California's Central Valley, drawing on his working-class upbringing among farmworkers and laborers. He received his MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley. His first collection, The Elements of San Joaquin (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times. He is also a prolific author of fiction and memoir for young readers.