Alma Luz Villanueva (fiction) is the author of three novels. The Ultraviolet Sky won The American Book Award in 1989, and was chosen for New American Writing, 1990. It is also listed in Five Hundred Great Books By Women, edited by Holly Smith, which includes 500 novels from the 13th century to the present. Naked Ladies won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 1994. Both novels are used as textbooks in this country and abroad. She has also published a short story collection, Weeping Woman, La Llorona And Other Stories (which is being translated into Japanese and Spanish). Her newest novel, Luna's California Poppies, was published in 2002.

Villanueva is also the author of seven books of poetry, including the recently published Soft Chaos, and Planet, which won The Latin American Writers Institute Poetry Award (New York City, 1994), and poetry from Desire was chosen for The Best American Poetry, 1996. A film titled, Who Called Me to This Dance? by filmmaker and dancer Tonia Shimmin, features her poetry as script. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and her poetry appears in Prayers for a Thousand Years: Inspiration from Leaders and Visionaries Around the World. Her new book of poetry, VIDA, was published in 2002. Her essays and book reviews have also appeared in Letters To My Mother (Pocket Books), Hot Flashes (Faber and Faber), Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series, Volume 24 (Gale Research Publications), Visions Across The Americas (College textbook, Harcourt Brace), Letters to J.D. Salinger (University of Wisconsin Press), and Ms. magazine.

Villanueva's poetry and short stories have also been included in upcoming grammar, junior high and high school textbooks geared for the new century (she's especially proud of that). A bronze plaque with her poetry has been installed on the Waterfront in San Francisco (where she fished as a girl), as part of the San Francisco Art Commission's Poetry Project. Her work, both fiction and poetry, is included in numerous anthologies- most recently, an excerpt of Naked Ladies appeared in Caliente! The Best Erotic Writing in Latin American Fiction, as well as the anthologies: It's A Woman's World- A Century of Women's Voices In Poetry, and Under The Fifth Sun (a story from Weeping Woman, La Llorona and Other Stories).