Michael Nava says Colorado College gave him permission to be a writer.

The son of a poor, Latino family where the idea of being an artist was “off the scale,” Nava spent most of his four years at CC reading books.

“I took classes, of course, but the most important part of my education was the freedom to follow my intellectual curiosity,” Nava said. “When English Professor Ruth Barton told me I could be a writer, I felt like I had permission.”

Nava has published seven novels and a book of non-fiction. His novels about the adventures of a gay, Latino criminal defense lawyer deal with how legal, moral, and social issues affect individuals. His non-fiction book, “Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America,” was co-written with Robert Dawidoff, a professor of history at the Claremont Graduate School. In 2001, Nava received the Charles Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in Gay and Lesbian Literature. Past winners of this award include Adrienne Rich and Allen Ginsberg.

Nava is also an attorney who has spent most of his legal career as a government lawyer, first as a prosecutor, then as a judicial attorney with the California Court of Appeals, and now the California Supreme Court where he reviews petitions from criminal defendants seeking review of their convictions. He said he wanted to be a lawyer from the time he was eight or nine, even before he knew what lawyers did, because he idolized Abraham Lincoln, who was a lawyer.

Though he had wanted to be a writer and a lawyer since he was young, Nava was not particularly career-oriented while he was at CC. In fact, he said he feels somewhat sorry for students who go into college as if it were a vocational school.

“There’s plenty of time in life to learn a profession or to worry about a career and not nearly enough time to read Dante or Pablo Neruda or Simone Weil — all of whom I encountered in college and whose minds moved me profoundly,” Nava said. “Some of my happiest memories of CC are staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning with my friends, arguing over the relative merits of this poet over that one. Debating poets! Can you imagine?”

He credits his CC professors, especially his “beloved” Ruth Barton, with encouraging his curiosity. “They were wonderful intellectual models and warm, giving people.”

Many of Nava’s formative experiences at CC were intellectual — encountering certain writers for the first time and studying under brilliant and caring teachers. But it was also a time when Nava came to know himself.

“Specifically, it was during this time that I discovered and accepted my homosexuality and began to think about what that meant and would mean to me,” he said. “It was also a time of deep friendships, the likes of which I have not had since.”