Gabriel A. Fraire was born in East Chicago, Indiana, in the part of town known as “The Harbor.” It was the Mexican barrio that was adjacent to the steel mills. He grew up urban, ethnic and working class. All his family and friends were steel workers.
Fraire received several scholarships and was the first person in all his extended family to attend college.
In 1975 with his wife, Karen, Fraire moved to California where he worked as a journalist for ten years.
In 1992 his brother John, who lived in New York City, approached him about collaborating on a play. In 1994 the Castillo Theatre Company produced the Fraire brother’s first play, Who Will Dance With Pancho Villa. In 1996 their second play Cesar Died Today was produced by New Latino Visions theater company.
In 2003, the Fraire brothers collaborated to write a short film Stories of the Season that was produced as part of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum Mexican American History Planetarium Presentation, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Fraire also has had four books published: Windsor the Birth of a City a non-fiction book about how unincorporated areas become cities in California; I Remember Healdsburg, a collection of oral histories; Daddy I Need to Go Potty, a humorous book about parenthood; and, Latino Jesse, Fraire’s first book and written in 1972-73, an autobiographical fiction novel and Mill Rats, a suspense novel about steel workers in 1978 involved with smuggling refugees out from behind the iron curtain.
Contact Information: Gabriel Fraire
