Felipe H. Lopez

Dr. Felipe H. Lopez is originally from the Zapotec town of San Lucas Quiaviní, Oaxaca. He currently serves as advisor to the Oaxacan State Commission on Human Rights. At the age of 16 he migrated to Los Angeles, California, speaking no English and little Spanish. By 2007 he had earned his Ph.D. from UCLA in urban planning. It was at UCLA that he began working with linguists to document his language, resulting in a trilingual Zapotec-Spanish-English dictionary (Munro & Lopez et al. 1999). His Zapotec poetry has also been published in the Latin American Literary Review and The Acentos Review. The short story featured in LALT, "Liaza chaa / I am going home," was awarded first place in the narrative category in the 2017 Premios CaSa competition for the creation of literature in Zapotec. The Spanish translations are his own. He is presently working on a book of Zapotec language poetry. More of his writing can be found at http://felipehlopez.weebly.com/.