NEW YORK - Influential Puerto Rican poet and writer Miguel Algarin has died.

Algarin was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Manhattan as a boy.

After college he co-founded the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side in the early 1970s.

Algarin won three American Book Awards as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award, and taught at Rutgers University for more than 30 years

Miguel Algarin was 79 years old.