Marcos Villatoro

Marcos McPeek Villatoro is a writer from the United States. He is the author of six novels, two collections of poetry and a memoir, and the producer/director of the documentary “Tamale Road: A Memoirfrom El Salvador.” He has written essays for National Public Radio and PBS. He resides in Los Angeles.
McPeek Villatoro was born on February 20, 1962 in San Francisco, California. His mother is fromEl Salvador, his father from the Appalachian Mountains of east Tennessee. He lived the first three years of his life in the Mission District of San Francisco, until his family moved to his father’shometown of Rogersville, Tennessee, where he spent most of his life until 1980. In August of that year he moved to Davenport, Iowa, where he attended St. Ambrose University as a seminarian for theRoman Catholic Church.
In January 1982 he met his future wife, Michelle Menster (a local Iowan). He left the seminary in May of that year. He and Menster married in May 1984.
After graduation from St.Ambrose University, McPeek Villatoro entered the Masters Program in English Literature at the University of Iowa. He graduated in May 1985. In November of that year he and his wife moved to Nicaraguawith the nonprofit program Witness for Peace, where they reported war atrocities in the northern department of Nueva Segovia, on the Honduran border.
In 1986 the couple moved back to the UnitedStates, where they worked in an environmental education camp in the Tennessee Smokey Mountains. In 1988 they joined the missionary program Maryknoll. They moved to Guatemala and worked there until 1991.That same year McPeek Villatoro worked as administrator and fundraiser for the Glenmary Co-Missioners. The couple moved to northern Alabama, where his wife worked as an advocate of the growing migrantfarm community.
In 1996 McPeek Villatoro was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he graduated with an MFA in 1998.
That same year he, Michelle and their four children moved to Los...