Dagoberto GilbDagoberto Gilb was born in Los Angeles in 1950. A mix of crude humor, worldly terror and economic misfortune distinguishes his stories. His life was neither easy nor peaceful, and these influences are reflected in his writing style and choice of topics. The story titled "Love in LA", by Dagoberto Gilb, shows how many reasons can be found to see irony and even satire in the title of the story and how all the stories fit together in some way. Dagobert Gilb's childhood was spent running wild in a bad part of Los Angeles. At the age of eighteen, Gilb decided to attend college, earning a degree in Philosophy and Religious Studies. It was during this period that he began keeping personal notebooks. After earning a master's degree, he became a journeyman carpenter from 1976 to 1991, which gave him the flexibility to devote large amounts of time to writing. He is married to a woman named Rebeca and has two sons named Antonio and Ricardo. Gilb worked in the English Department at the University of Texas in 1988, the University of Arizona in 1992, and the University of Wyoming in 1994 ("Dagoberto Gilb"). Literary magazines were not even remotely interested in publishing Gilb's stories, which focus primarily on the professional and personal struggles of working-class Mexican Americans. But his unapologetic stories about working-class Mexican Americans made him a voice of his people (Reid130). Gilb's short stories are vividly set in desert towns of the Southwest and usually feature a Hispanic protagonist who is kind-hearted but often irresponsible and is forever one step away from disaster or automobile breakdown (Reid130). Gilb was persuaded to submit some of the 750 pages of his unpublished stories to the National Endowment of the Arts, and when he won a grant, it allowed him to take time to put together a collection of his work. That was The Magic of Blood, which was published in 1993 and earned him a PEN Hemingway Award. The following year, recognition abounded in the form of prestigious literary prizes and a wave of critical attention for The Magic of Blood ("The Magic of Blood"63-74). Gilb won numerous awards including the Institute of Letters Award for Best Fiction Book and Best Short Story in 1993. In El Paso, he gave up New York publishing and sold his collection of short stories to the University of New Mexico Press.