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Featured Author
December 2021

Charlene Garcia Simms was born in the San Luis Valley. She is a teacher-librarian and is currently the Genealogy and Special Collections librarian in Pueblo.

Charlene and her late husband, Ed, started El Escritorio Publishing in 1989 and published 15 books with a focus on Southwest history and genealogy. They also published several magazines about Hispano culture and Chicano art.

Charlene is also a writer and poet. She has published several articles on genealogy and history of the Southwest in several journals and magazines. In 2018 she had a chapter published in an anthology, titled: Genealogy and the Librarian, Perspectives on Research, Instruction, Outreach and Management. In 2017, she co-authored, Images of America, Pueblo, published by Arcadia Publishing. In 2012, she edited and coordinated the publishing of Spanish/Mexican Legacy of Latinos in Pueblo County, written by Dr. David Sandoval through a grant she received from the Colorado Humanities. She then coordinated the painting of a mural, "Corazon del Pueblo," based on the book and was instrumental, through the library, in commissioning David Ocelotl Garcia from Denver to paint the mural that hangs at the Rawlings Library in Pueblo.

She has written a memoir called, The Orphan Stalk, Growing up adopted in a Manito Culture, which will be published in February 2021. Most of her poetry is about the amazing people she grew up with in her small village. Two poems, "Airando el Frijol," about her grandfather, Tranquilino Manchego, and "Eres Chicana," about identity crisis can be found on the Internet under her name. She has also written a chapter for the next "Tummy Tales," book to be published by Metro State University in 2021, titled "Chicos Deliciosos del Horno." In 2019 she was inducted as a Corn Mother, a project coordinated by Renee Fajardo from Metro State University of Denver.