Alcalá was born in Compton, California, in 1954 to Mexican parents. Her ancestry is from Northern Mexico, including Sonora and Chihuahua; some of her great-grandparents lived in Saltillo, Mexico. She was raised Protestant. She identifies as a descendant of Sephardiconversos with roots in Nyer, France,[1] and maintains a "relationship with Judaism". She applied for Spanish citizenship after the Spanish government began offering citizenship to Sephardi Jews expelled during the Spanish Inquisition.[2] She identifies one of her grandmother's as being "half Opata Indian", the daughter of an Opata woman and an Irish man.[3]
Career
Alcalá is also a co-founder of and contributing editor to The Raven Chronicles. A play based on her novel, Spirits of the Ordinary, was produced by The Miracle Theatre of Portland, Oregon. She served on the board of Richard Hugo House and the advisory boards of Con Tinta, Field’s End and the Centrum Writers Conference. She is the winner of several awards for her writing, including an Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship in 2007.[4]
Charles de Lint, reviewing The Flower in the Skull, declared that "Alcalá is fast becoming one of my favourite writers," praising her work for the "richness [of her] characterization and settings."[11]