Hector Tobar

Picture of Hector Tobar
Professor, Literary Journalism
School of Humanities
Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies
School of Social Sciences
M.F.A., University of California, Irvine, 1995, Creative Writing, Fiction
University of California, Irvine
365 Social Science Tower
Mail Code: 5100
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Fiction Literary Journalism Latino Studies
Short Biography
Héctor Tobar is the Los Angeles-born author of six books, including the novels The Tattooed
Soldier, The Barbarian Nurseries, and The Last Great Road Bum. His non-fiction Deep Down
Dark: The Untold Stories of Thirty-Three Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that Set
Them Free, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times
bestseller; it was adapted into the film The 33, starring Antonio Banderas. His books have been
translated into fifteen languages. The Barbarian Nurseries was a New York Times Notable Book
and won the California Book Award Gold Medal for fiction. Tobar’s fiction has also appeared in
Best American Short Stories 2016 and 2022. He earned his MFA in Fiction from the University
of California, Irvine, where he is currently a professor. As a journalist, he was the Los Angeles
Times bureau chief in Buenos Aires and Mexico City, and was a member of the reporting team
that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. Tobar has also been an
op-ed writer for the New York Times and a contributor to The New Yorker, Harper’s, Smithsonian
and National Geographic. In 2020, he received a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University.
His most recent book is Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths
of “Latino.” In 2023, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction. He is the son of
Guatemalan immigrants.
Publications
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino"
The Last Great Road Bum, a novel
The Tattooed Soldier, a novel

Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States

The Barbarian Nurseries, a novel

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that Set Them Free

Best American Short Stories 2016, 2022
Last updated
10/05/2023