Luis J. Rodriguez has around 50 years working in prisons, with gang and non-gang youth in urban and rural communities, among the unhoused, and in Indigenous reservations. He's a former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles with 17 multi-genre books, including eight poetry collections. He's best known for the bestselling memoir "Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." and its sequel, "It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions & Healing." His talks, readings, and workshops have occurred across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, as well as Europe and Japan. He's also a former journalist in East Los Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Inland Empire, and Chicago, including as a reporter/writer for CNN, Westinghouse, and NBC. He's covered stories of Indigenous uprisings in Mexico, prison life, police abuse, houselessness, major labor battles, social justice and electoral battles like in the Deep South, rise of Mara gangs in El Salvador and Guatemala, and the Contra War in Nicaragua and southern Honduras. In 2022 he received a California Legacy Fellowship and the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times.

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