Charli g Valdez is Assistant Professor of 20th Century American and Latino Literatures at Drew University and has taught at Wabash College, Brown University and The University of Houston. He received the Fulbright Grant in 2001, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Walker Scholarship in 2001, the U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in Brazilian Literature in 1998, and the Cambor Fellowship in fiction in 2003 and 1999. Prior to that, he worked as a legal advocate, organizer, and translator for Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), the farmworkers' union of Oregon, and for non-profits in Chiapas, Mexico. Charli Valdez completed his dissertation at the University of Houston in 2004, an ekphrastic novel, The Deaf Man’s Manor. He has received an Honorable Mention for fiction from Phoebe and his most recent publications include “Oppositional Autoethnographic Expression in American Literatures" and the short story "Talkabout." He has recently given papers on Chicano popular culture, Junot Diaz, Sandra Cisneros, and on autoethnographic expressions in American Literature at the MLA conference, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Conference, and the Spanish Association of American Studies Conference.