Jimmy Santiago Baca, born in New Mexico of Indio-Mexican descent, was raised first by his grandmother and later sent to an orphanage. A runaway at age 13, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum-security prison that he learned to read and write, unearthing a voracious passion for poetry. Some of Baca’s poetry collections include C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans: Dream Boy's Story (Grove Press, 2002), Set This Book on Fire (1999), In the Way of the Sun (1997), Black Mesa Poems (1995), and What's Happening (1982).