Donald Gutierrez was a member of the University of Notre Dame English Department faculty from 1968 to 1975, then joined the English Department at Western New Mexico University in Silver City. He retired from WNMU in 1994 and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife Marlene Zander Gutierrez. He received a "New Mexico Eminent Scholar Award" in 1989. Gutierrez published six books of literary criticism, two of which focus on D. H. Lawrence and one on Kenneth Rexroth. After retirement he published over fifty essays and reviews, most of which concern social justice and American state terrorism abroad.