David Bowles is a Mexican-American author from south Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. He has written several titles, most notably The Smoking Mirror (Pura Belpré Honor Book) and They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid’s Poems (Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, Claudia Lewis Award for Excellence in Poetry, Pura Belpré Honor Book, Walter Dean Myers Honor Book). He is also the co-author, along with Adam Gidwitz, of The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande. In 2017, David was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.