Dr. Nicolás Kanellos

Founder/Director, Arte Público Press and the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project
Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Studies, University of Houston

As founder and director of Arte Público Press, the front-runner in the field of U.S. Hispanic literary publishing, Nicolás Kanellos has been the driving force in making the fruits of Hispanic literary creativity available to all people. It is his vision of a showcase for Hispanic literary creativity, arts and culture that has taken Arte Público Press from its beginnings on the artistic fringe to its current status as the oldest and most accomplished publisher of literature by U.S. Hispanic authors.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed, and the U.S. Senate confirmed, Dr. Kanellos to a six-year term on the National Council for the Humanities. Dr. Kanellos is also a Fellow of the Ford, Lilly and Gulbenkian Foundations and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan presented him with the White House Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature. He was awarded the 2014 “Enrique Anderson Imbert” Prize of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language for Lifetime Achievement for contributing to the knowledge and dissemination of the Spanish language and Hispanic culture in the United States. And in 2016, he received the Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica (Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic Queen), the highest decoration given to a civilian by the Spanish government.