Angel Vigil is an award-winning author, performer, stage director and teacher. His awards include the Heritage Artist Award and the Master Artist Award from the Colorado Council on the Arts. He has also received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education and the Mayor’s Indi­vidual Artist Fellowship Award. He also was awarded the Colorado State Theatre Educator of the Year Award.

 

He is retired Chairman of the Visual and Performing Arts Depart­ment and Director of Drama at Colorado Academy in Denver. He also is an educator for the History Colorado Center. 

 

Angel is the author of seven award-winning books on Hispanic and Western culture and arts. His book The Corn Woman, and Other Stories and Legends from the Hispanic Southwest won the prestigious New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age National Award. His book Una Linda Raza, Cultural and Artistic Traditions of the Hispanic Southwest won the Border Library Association Southwest Book of the Year Award and the Colorado Book of the Year Special Recognition Award.

 

His other books are Borderlands—Living in Two Worlds, The Story of Hispanics in the American Southwest; Teatro—Plays for Young Audiences; Riding Tall in the Saddle—The Cowboy Fact Book; The Eagle and the Cac­tus—Stories and Legends from Mexico; and Papi, How Many Stars Are in the Sky? —A Children’s Fable.

 

Angel is a Colorado Heritage Artist storyteller who has performed throughout the nation at festivals, universities, schools and art centers. He has been featured storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, Keepers of the Word Festival at Amherst Col­lege, the Rocky Mountain Storytelling Festival, the International Reading Association, the National Independent School Library Association, the Four Corners Storytelling Festival, the Mesa Storytelling Festival, the 360 ~ Borderlands 

 

Greenville Chautauqua Festival and the Nebraska Storytelling Festival. His specialty is the oral traditions of the Hispanic Southwest. 

 

Angel is also a member of the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities Chautauqua program for his historical presentation. Angel has created five historical characters: El Vaquero, America’s First Cow­boy; El Conquistador, The Explorer of New Worlds; Tezcatlipoca, The Supreme God of the Aztec Emperors; Manuel de Lisa, Northwest Trap­per and Explorer; and Mariano Medina, Colorado Pioneer.