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Photo by Don J. Usner

Rubén Martínez

Photo by Don J. Usner

Rubén Martínez is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and author. His books include Desert America: A Journey Across Our Most Divided Landscape; Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail; The New Americans; and The Other Side: Notes from the New L.A., Mexico City and Beyond. He hosted and co-wrote the feature-length documentary film about the first century after contact between Europe and the New World, When Worlds Collide, shot on location throughout Latin America and Spain, for PBS. He won an Emmy Award for hosting KCET-TV’s politics and culture series, “Life & Times.”

Martínez's essays, opinions and reportage have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boom: A Journal of California, Salon, Village Voice, The Nation, Spin, Sojourners, and Mother Jones. He is the recipient of a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, a Freedom of Information Award from the ACLU, and a Greater Press Club of Los Angeles Award of Excellence. He holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature & Writing at Loyola Marymount University.

Prizes, Awards & Fellowships
  • 2002 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Nonfiction
Residencies
  • 2008