Charlene Garcia-Simms

Charlene Garcia-Simms was born in the San Luis Valley and grew up in the small village of Garcia right on the Colorado-New Mexico state line. She is a librarian-Genealogist-Archivist and is currently the Project Archivist at CSU-Pueblo, focusing on the Chicano Movement archives and oral histories. Charlene and her late husband, Ed, started El Escritorio Publishing in 1989 and published 22 books with a focus on Southwest history and genealogy. They also published magazines about Hispano culture and Chicano art. She has published several articles on genealogy and history of the Southwest in 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 2019 she was inducted as a Corn Mother, a project coordinated by Renee Fajardo. at Metro State University.

In 2012, while at Rawlings Library in Pueblo, 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 library.

In 2017, she co-authored, Images of America, Pueblo, published by Arcadia Publishing. She was one of the authors in the Tummy Tales  book, published by Metro State University in 2021. Her story was titled "Chicos Deliciosos del Horno."  In 2022, She wrote a memoir called, The Orphan Stalk, Growing up adopted in a Manito Culture, about her life growing up as a Criada, someone who is raised by people other than her parents, a cultural trait in the Hispanic culture of days gone by.

She is currently writing a biography on Olibama Lopez Tushar, author of The People of El Valle, a History of the Spanish Settlers in the San Luis Valley, of which she published three editions under the El Escritorio imprint. Olibama was one of the first Hispanic graduates at CU-Boulder in 1929 and graduated with a master’s degree at DU in 1941. In 2023, she was inducted posthumously into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.