Maceo Montoya grew up in Elmira, California. He graduated from Yale University in 2002 and received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from Columbia University in 2006. His paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions throughout the country as well as internationally, including the traveling show “Caras Vemos, Corazones No Sabemos: The Human Landscape of Mexican Migration to the United States” and “Inter-viewing Paintings” at the SOMA Museum of Art in Seoul, Korea. Maceo’s drawings are featured in David Montejano’s Sancho’s Journal (University of Texas Press, 2012), an ethnography of the Brown Berets in San Antonio.

As a muralist Maceo has completed a number of public art commissions, including youth-driven projects with the Eastside Arts Alliance in Oakland and the Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA) in Woodland, CA, where he in an affiliated faculty member. His Chicana/o Studies Mural Workshop classes have painted murals at Pacific Coast Producers Tomato Cannery, Yolo County Migrant Head Start, and Woodland Community College. For more information about the mural workshop visit www.ucdmuralarchive.com

Also a writer, Maceo’s first novel, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Review, 2010), was awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for “Best First Book.” His writings have also recently been published in Eleven, Eleven, The Packinghouse Review, and In the Grove. More information about Maceo’s writing and artwork can be found on his website www.maceomontoya.com