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Daniel Chacón (born 1962) is a Chicano short story writer, novelist, essayist, editor, professor, and radio host based in El Paso, Texas.^[1] He chairs the University of Texas, El Paso's creative writing graduate program, the country's only bilingual MFA program.^[2] He founded the Chicano Writers and Artists Association with Fresno State classmate and close friend Andrés Montoya in 1985.^[3][4][5]

Chacón was born and raised in Fresno, California; his father was from El Paso, Texas.^[1][6] One of his brothers is writer Kenneth Robert Chacón, from whom he was estranged for many years.^[7][8] He earned a BA in Political Science from California State University, Fresno and an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Oregon.^[2][9][10] While at CSU, he wrote for the campus newspaper La Voz de Aztan.^[9]

Chacón joined the MFA program at University of Texas El Paso as an assistant professor in Creative Writing in 2000^[11] and has been the department chair since 2017.^[12] Since 2011, he has co-hosted the KTEP show Words on a Wire; his original co-host was Benjamin Alire Sáenz and is now Tim Z. Hernandez.^[13][9] Guests include Alison Hawthorne Deming, Francisco Aragón, and Garrett Hongo.^[14] He serves at the assistant director of the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation and was appointed chair for the International Association of Burn Camps' Board of Directors in 2018,^[15] and is part of the Southwest Festival of the Written Word's advisory board.^[16]

He has also edited several books, including A Jury of Trees (a posthumous collection of poetry by Andrés Montoya) (2017), The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: The Selected Work of José Antonio Burciaga (2008; with Mimi Reisel Gladstein) and Colón-ization: The Posthumous Poems of Andrés Montoya (2017).^[17][18][19] His writing has also appeared in several anthologies: Caliente: The Best Erotic Writing in Latin American Fiction (2002), Lengua Fresca: Latinos Writing on the Edge (2006), and Best of the West 2009: New Stories from the West Side of the Missouri (2009), among others.^[20] Journals that have published his work include ZYZZYVA, Americas Review, Bilingual Review, Colorado Review, New England Review, and Callaloo.^[21] He also dabbles in playwrighting, standup, and poetry.^[22][23]

Chacón is married and has a step-daughter.^[4] His first child was born in 2020.^[24] He began speaking Spanish in 1996.^[25]

Chacón has received a grant from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation^[26] and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2019.^[27]