Maceo Montoya is an award-winning author, artist, and educator who has published books in a variety of genres. His books include The Scoundrel and the Optimist (awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for "Best First Book" and Latino Stories named him one of its "Top Ten New Latino Writers to Watch), The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, Letters to the Poet from His Brother, You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories (finalist for Foreword Review's INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award) among others. Montoya's paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. He is currently a professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at the University of California, Davis where he teaches courses on Chicanx culture and literature.

"In order to fulfill his creative ambitions, the unnamed narrator of Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces: A Novel battles a world unkind to artists as he recounts his descent into ignominy from the mountains of New Mexico to an insane asylum in California. A multi-layered work told through both image and word, the novel is a commentary on the Chicano literary canon and how the stories of outsiders fit into the larger context of Chicano literature"--