The University of Arizona Press
October 8, 2025
Please join us in congratulating Tim Z. Hernandez for having his book, They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, chosen as a finalist for Memoir Magazine‘s 2025 Memoir Grand Prize for Books and a winner in the Social Justice, Healing, and Investigative Research category! Read the full announcement here.
Hernandez’s mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed “a stunning piece of investigative journalism,” and the New York Times hailed as “painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendant of farmworkers.”
In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world.
Tim will be presenting at the 2025 Hay Festival Forum on October 19. See the full schedule here.
Congratulations to Tim on this incredible achievement!
Tim Z. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His books include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award. His work has been featured in international media, and in 2018 he was recognized by the California Senate for his work locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos, which is chronicled in his book, All They Will Call You. Hernandez is an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program.
