Wayne J Pitts

Wayne Pitts received his bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Western Carolina University in 1991. After serving in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa, he attended graduate school at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, completing his master’s in sociology in 1995 and his Ph.D. in the same field in 2003. He was a tenured professor of criminology at the University of Memphis, where he spent eight years before going to work as a research criminologist at RTI International in 2012. He has lived in Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, and he currently has multiple work activities across Central America and the Caribbean. Wayne was an Author-in-Residence for Appalachian Memory Keepers and is a member of the Hispanic Heritage Literature Organization Milibrohispano. He is the author of Chita, the Famous Chicken from Toto/Chita, la famosa gallina de Toto, which won the 2024 Bronze Medal in Best Children's Fiction Picture Book – English from the International Latino Book Awards.