Nina Serrano

Biography

Early life Serrano was born in 1934 in Weehawken, New Jersey She grew up in Latino and other immigrant communities in New York City. She trained in theater, studied anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and traveled with student peace groups to Soviet Russia and revolutionary China in the 1950s.

While raising her family and teaching, Nina has worked in theater, radio, and film. She helped make movies about Fidel Castro's Cuba, about Salvador Allende's Chile and Sandinista Nicaragua. In Cuba, in 1968, she met Salvadorean exiled poet Roque Dalton and they co-authored a TV drama about the folkloric Dalton Gang and saw it produced on Cuban television. This instantly made her a writer.

Returning to San Francisco, journalism, playwriting and poetry filled the early years of her development as an activist writer. She wrote a series of articles on the Los Siete trial and wrote poetry published in the San Francisco Good Times. In 1969, she joined Editorial Pocho Che, an activist publishing group of Latino poets. She wrote her first book of poetry, Heart Songs, during this period, and it was published in 1980. The Story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and Weavings. She also wrote and produced film scripts, including Que Hacer? (What is to Be Done?), Después del terremoto Back from Nicaragua La Cantata de Santa Marie de Iquique

Other writings

Education for Storytelling Assassinations of a Poet: Memories of Roque Dalton The Story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg The Story of the Chicken Made of Rags Program of Economic Reactivation for the Benefit of the People: 1980 Nicaragua Way

Awards Serrano has won several international film awards, including the XXXIII Mostra internazionale D'Arte Cinematografica award for Que Hacer: What is to Be Done?; and the Kraków, Poland International Film Festival award for After the Earthquake: Despues del terremoto.

Nina Serrano was awarded Oakland Magazine'''s "Best Local Poet" award in 2010.

In 2024 she received an Adelle Foley Award from PEN Oakland for her work as an author, radio host, and political activist.

Personal life Serrano served as an Alameda County Arts Commissioner, and is a former director of San Francisco's Poetry in the Schools program. She was a co-founder of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco's Mission District, where she is still actively involved. In addition, she is a long-time producer of radio programs on Pacifica Radio station KPFA (94.1 FM) in Berkeley, California, currently hosting La Raza Chronicles on Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. PT and Open Book'' the first and second Wednesday of each month at 3:30 pm PT. Her programs also air on KZCT in Vallejo.

Nina Serrano appears in the video "Frida en El Espejo/Frida in the Mirror" by Adrian Arias and music by Greg Landau which screened at the SF Film Festival in April 2009. She is a great fan of the band Carne Cruda and their song “Oakland's Tight.” She is consultant for Round World Media and Fig Leaf Technologies.