Fred Candelaria was born near El Paso, Texas in December 1929. He studied Latin and Greek at St. John's Seminary and later added the study of French and German languages to his native Spanish. He was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he was assigned as a translator in Army Intelligence because he is bilingual in Spanish and English. He later took an English degree from the University of Texas, studied 17th century literature at Yale and obtained a PhD from the University of Missouri (in 1959). Throughout his time in graduate school he was publishing poems in various reviews. Candelaria taught at the University of Oregon until 1965, when he was invited to join the original faculty of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. There he founded and edited The West Coast Review until 1986. He also published five books of poetry and numerous anthologies and academic papers. In 1986 he took early retirement as Professor Emeritus to concentrate on writing, composing and photography.