Armando Rendón Author

Armando Rendón, an award-winning author of novels for young people, grew up in the West Side barrio of San Antonio, Texas. He moved to California in 1950, attended schools in the San Francisco Bay Area through college, and began a writing career in journalism which in 1967 landed him jobs with federal agencies in Washington, D.C.

That led to freelance work as a writer, starting his own public relations agency in the early 1970s, and then founding a Latino youth program along with teaching at The American University in the latter 1970s. Recruited by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1979, he ran the promotion program aimed at getting Latinos to respond to the 1980 Census.

During this period he earned a Masters in Education from the Antioch Graduate School of Education and a Juris Doctor from the Washington School of Law, The American University. He worked pro bono in the field of international law, specifically with indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations, including accompanying delegations three times to the annual UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva.

Rendón returned to the Bay Area in 1988 in a public affairs role with a state agency. Part-time, he taught in the Great Books seminar program at his alma mater, St. Mary’s College of California.

Since retiring in 2004, he has authored two books in a planned four-part series for young people that have been named as finalists in the 2014 and 2015 International Latino Book Awards; the third and fourth novels will be released in 2015. The stories sound a lot like the early life and times of the author.

Rendón published Chicano Manifesto, the first book about Chicanos by a Chicano, in 1971. He is also the founder and editor of “Somos en escrito The Latino Literary Online Magazine,” which he launched in November 2009; it can be found at www.somosenescrito.com.

He now lives near Berkeley, California.