Dr. Gabriela Baeza Ventura is the director of Arte Público Press, the nation’s preeminent publisher of US Hispanic literature. A professor of Spanish in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston, she also serves as director of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Program (Recovery) and co-founder of the US Latino Digital Humanities Center (USLDH).

A nationally recognized scholar and editor, Dr. Baeza Ventura has devoted her career to expanding access to US Latino literature, archives and cultural heritage. As director, she continues Arte Público’s founding mission—to recover, publish and make available the creative and scholarly contributions of writers whose voices have shaped and continue to shape American culture.

Under her leadership, Arte Público Press remains at the forefront of literary innovation, publishing across genres—from fiction, poetry and drama to children’s and young adult literature through its imprint Piñata Books—and championing new and historically underrepresented voices. Building on more than four decades of pioneering work, she is guiding the Press into a new era of digital access, bilingual literacy and community engagement through open-access archives, educational initiatives and national partnerships.

Dr. Baeza Ventura has contributed her expertise on US Latino archives and data collection to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). From 2021 to 2023, she served on the Mellon-ACLS Commission on Fostering and Sustaining Diverse Digital Scholarship, helping to advance ethical and equitable practices in digital research.

Her scholarship centers on women’s narratives, immigration, linguistic identity and the archival recovery. She is the author of La imagen de la mujer en las crónicas del “México de afuera” and editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including Con otra mirada: Cuentos hispanos de los Estados Unidos, US Latino Literature Today: Anthology of Contemporary Latino Literature and the collected works of poet Angela de Hoyos.