woostify domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/latestwordpress/lonestar.a1professionals.net_public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131Obituary for Bobby Byrd<\/p>\n
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photo from Facebook<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Texas poet Bobby Byrd, co-founder of Cinco Puntos Press, died July 11 at his home in El Paso. He was 80 and had retired from book publishing in 2021.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Survivors include his wife, Lee Merrill Byrd, and three children, Susie Byrd, Johnny Byrd, and Andy Byrd. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Internationally prominent as a supporter of U.S.-Mexico border literature, Bobby Byrd started Cinco Puntos Press with his wife Lee in El Paso in 1985. Cinco Puntos \u201cbecame a countercultural force, focusing on the underrepresented authors of the border,\u201d according to Publishers Weekly<\/em>. The Byrds, writers themselves, published more than 300 titles that included novels, young adult books, poetry, children\u2019s books, and nonfiction over a 36-year run before selling Cinco Puntos to another multicultural publishing company, New York-based Lee & Low Books, last year. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Bobby Byrd, a native of Memphis, Tennessee, moved to El Paso with his wife and young family in 1978. Their independent press initially was a home-based enterprise, and their goals went beyond financial survival, Byrd told the Texas Tribune<\/i> three years ago. They wanted to reflect \u201ca sensibility of border life,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The Byrds\u2019 third book, La Llorona<\/i>, a bilingual story book by Joe Hayes, has now sold more than 600,000 copies. The list of other authors with books published by the Byrds is long, and many have won awards and moved on to larger publishing houses. Some of the names range from Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz, whose book of short stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club<\/i>, won the 2013 PEN\/Faulkner Award for Fiction, to Sergio Troncoso, whose 2019 collection of short stories, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant\u2019s Son<\/i>, received acclaim from the Texas Institute of Letters and the International Latino Book Awards. Beto O\u2019Rourke and the late Gary Cartwright also had books published by Cinco Puntos.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Bobby Byrd\u2019s poetry collections include On the Transmigration of Souls in El Paso<\/i> and Otherwise, My Life is Ordinary<\/i>, plus several others. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Bobby and Lee Merrill Byrd stirred up international controversy in 1999 and hit the front page of the New York Times after they published The Story of Colors\/La Historia de los Colores<\/i>, a bilingual edition of a 1996 children\u2019s book written by Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of an indigenous uprising in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The National Endowment for the Arts pulled its grant to publish the book, fearing controversy after journalists began asking questions about the author. But another organization, the Lannan Foundation, quickly stepped in with a new and larger grant, and the book\u2019s first printing sold out quickly. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Afterward, Bobby Byrd stated: \u201cIt was a strange media frenzy, a true boon to Cinco Puntos. But real ideas and issues got lost in that frenzy, the most important of which is the indigenous struggle for autonomy and land in Chiapas.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Cinco Puntos is now a Lee & Low imprint that publishes \u201cpicture books, middle grade, young adult, and books for adults that feature a wide range of diverse cultures,\u201d the company states on its website.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n