José Skinner worked as a Spanish-English court interpreter and translator in the courts of New Mexico before earning his MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, with Marilynne Robinson as his thesis supervisor.  He subsequently taught creative writing and directed the bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas-Pan American, on the Texas-Tamaulipas border.  He currently lives in Austin, Texas, where he volunteers for Proyecto Defensa Laboral and, of course, writes.