Lucha Corpi: 1945—: Poet, Novelist Biography

Lucha Corpi: 1945—: Poet, novelist.

Lucha Corpi has never viewed art and politics as two separate disciplines, but has infused her poetry, short stories, and novels with her experiences as a Hispanic, an immigrant, and as a woman. "I never intended to be a political writer," she told Karin Rosa Ikas in Chicana Ways, "I wrote about what I wanted to write, and I never set limits of any kind in terms of expression or thematically." Corpi became involved in the Chicano civil rights movement and was instrumental in forming Aztlán Cultural, an arts service organization. She won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1979 and was awarded first prize in the Palabra Nueva competition for "Martyrs of the Soul" in 1983. In addition to writing poetry and prose, Corpi completed her first mystery novel, Eulogy for a Brown Angel, in 1992.