Julian Silva literary papers

Julian Silva was a fourth generation Portuguese-American author born in San Lorenzo California in 1927. His Azorean ancestors immigrated to San Francisco California Bay Area in the 1870s. In his youth he attended San Lorenzo grammar school which his father was a school trustee. In his teenage years he attended St. Josephs High School up to his junior year because he was accepted into St. Mary’s College even though he did not have his high school diploma. After one year at the college he joined the Naval Reserve as a hospital corpsman for the last year of World War II. Julian Silva went on to receive his bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco in 1949 and after a year of graduate studies at the University of California Berkley, Silva began his teaching career in San Francisco in 1953 at Mission High School as an English teacher. After five years he transferred over to Galileo High School where he would teach there for the next twenty one years, the last eight years there he was head of the English Department. Silva then went on to teach at Washington High School for part of one academic year then to a year sabbatical. After sabbatical he taught at Wallenberg High School and then went on to teach at Lowell High School where he would again be the head of the English Department and finish his career there. Julian Silva has written many books and short stories, the most well-known of his novels is The Gunnysack Castle published in 1983 by the Ohio University Press