Gary Soto w/ Tom Bachtell
Saturday at the Canal



Gary Soto was born and educated in California, where he worked as a migrant laborer before attending Fresno State. The grandson of Mexican immigrants, Soto began writing poetry in college. He is one of the youngest poets to appear in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Soto has written ten poetry collections, including One Kind of Faith, Junior College and 1995's New And Selected Poems. He was a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. Soto has also won the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Tomás Rivera Prize. In addition to poetry, Soto has written novels, children's books and a memoir. Having taught in both English and Chicano studies departments, Soto is currently the Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.

Visual Artist: Tom Bachtell is a Chicago-based cartoonist and illustrator. His drawings and caricatures appear each week in "The Talk of the Town" and other sections of The New Yorker, a publication for which he has been drawing for more than 15 years, and many other national and international publications. Working primarily in brush and ink, his drawing style pays homage to many of the classic illustrators and cartoonists of the 1920s and 1930s. He has drawn countless celebrities and politicians -- including more than his share of George W. Bushes. He is the illustrator for When I Knew, a new book release from HarperCollins. Primarily self-taught as an artist, Tom Bachtell was originally schooled as a classical pianist at the Cleveland (Ohio) Institute of Music and received a B.A. in English and Music from Case Western Reserve University in 1980.

Design: K.C. Clarke & Mary-Jo Mostowy