Chacón joined the MFA program at University of Texas at El Paso as an assistant professor in Creative Writing in 2000[11] and has been the department chair since 2017.[12] Since 2011, he has co-hosted the KTEP show Words on a Wire; his original co-host was Benjamin Alire Sáenz and is now Tim Z. Hernandez.[13][9] Guests include Alison Hawthorne Deming, Francisco Aragón, and Garrett Hongo.[14] He serves at the assistant director of the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation and was appointed chair for the International Association of Burn Camps' Board of Directors in 2018,[15] and is part of the Southwest Festival of the Written Word's advisory board.[16]
He has also edited several books, including A Jury of Trees (a posthumous collection of poetry by Andrés Montoya) (2017), The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: The Selected Work of José Antonio Burciaga (2008; with Mimi Reisel Gladstein) and Colón-ization: The Posthumous Poems of Andrés Montoya (2017).[17][18][19] His writing has also appeared in several anthologies: Caliente: The Best Erotic Writing in Latin American Fiction (2002), Lengua Fresca: Latinos Writing on the Edge (2006), and Best of the West 2009: New Stories from the West Side of the Missouri (2009), among others.[20] Journals that have published his work include ZYZZYVA, Americas Review, Bilingual Review, Colorado Review, New England Review, and Callaloo.[21] He also dabbles in playwrighting, standup, and poetry.[22][23]
Personal life
Chacón is married and has a step-daughter.[4] His first child was born in 2020.[24] He began speaking Spanish in 1996.[25]
From Mexico City to Aztlan Oregon, in bittersweet comic fables and through tales of frightening realism, Daniel Chacon captures the shrewd, furtive, and sometimes torturous ways by which Mexican-Americans manage to survive in intimidating territory.[32]
Joey Molina had never been in a fight. The very thought of violence upset him. He only wanted to be an actor, and so he read plays and learned new words with his mother. When he's cast in the lead role in the school play, he's eager to go home and tell his family about it, but his parents have an announcement of their own.[33]
The winner of the Hudson Prize, this collection of stories, mainly set in the Southwest, digs deep into the lives of its characters. Daniel Chacon's writing is very lucid and dips into Carveresque plain talk at times, but he isn't afraid to use pretty descriptions as well.[34]
In this collection of short and flash fiction, Daniel Chacón examines peoples' interactions with each other, the impact of identity and the importance of literature, art and music.[35]
Fourteen-year-old Victor has just been released from the hospital after barely surviving being shot. His mother accuses him of being a cholo, something he denies, but she's not the only adult that thinks he's a gangbanger. His sociology teacher sent him to a teach-in on gange violence, and other kids think he's in a gang. The truth is, he loves death metal, reading books, and drawing, but he can't seem to overcome society's expectations of him.[36]
These stories explore the concept of a wall that reaches beyond our immediate thoughts of a towering physical structure. While Chacón aims to address the partition along the U.S.-Mexico border, he also uses these stories to work through the intangible walls that divide communities and individuals—particularly those who straddle multiple cultures in their daily lives.[37]
