Victor L. Martinez was an American poet and author. He won the 1996 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his first novel, Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida. Martinez was the born in Fresno, California to Mexican migrant agricultural field workers of the Central Valley. He was one of twelve children. Victor attended California State University at Fresno and later obtained a graduate degree from Stanford University on a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship. He began writing as a poet and published a book of poetry, "Caring for a House," in 1992. He was a member of Humanizarte, a collective of Chicano poets, and later of the Chicano/Latino Writers' Center of San Francisco. He supported himself with jobs as a welder, truck driver, firefighter, teacher, and office clerk. In February 2011, he died of lung cancer at age 56 in San Francisco.
