Denise Chávez

Denise Chávez is a novelist, playwright and poet who, through her writings, has brought to life entire populations of memorable characters of the Southwest, both Mexican American and Anglo-American. Born on August 15, 1948, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Chávez was raised principally by her mother, Delfina, a teacher, because her father had abandoned the family while she was still young. After attending schools and colleges in Las Cruces, Chávez obtained a master’s degree in theater arts from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1974, and a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1984. During her career she has taught and been a writer-in-residence at numerous institutions in New Mexico and elsewhere. In 1988, she became a professor in the Drama Department of the University of Houston.

Denise Chávez has won numerous awards and fellowships, including Best Play Award for “The Wait” from New Mexico State University in 1970, the Steele Jones Fiction Award in 1986 for her story “The Last of the Menu Girls,” two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981 and 1982, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1984.

Despite Chávez’s high productivity as a playwright, it is her published works of fiction that have contributed most to her national reputation. Chávez has published short stories in magazines and a collection of inter-related stories, The Last of the Menu Girls (1986), which focuses on the coming of age of Rocío Esquivel. As Rocío compares her own life to that of her mother and as she encounters a wide range of characters in her neighborhood and at work, she begins to formulate her own identity. By the end of the book, we realize that we have been participating in the making of a novelist, and that what we have been reading is the product of Rocío’s creative and psychological exploration.