Noted Mexican-American writer Michele Serros has died at the age of 48 from cancer.

Serros is a celebrated short story writer, essayist and poet who became known for writing about growing up as a Mexican-American in Southern California. She earned her claim to fame as a college student in 1994 when she published "Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of Death, Identity and Oxnard," a collection book of stories and poems inspired by her family life and upbringing in a majority Hispanic coastal community.

Because of the success of "Chicana Falsa," Serros was one of 12 poets who were invited to tour with the Lollapalooza music festival.

Through her writings, Serros used wit and humor to express what it was like growing up as a both a fourth-generation Californian and Mexican-American. She also focused on being bicultural and a Latina who did not learn to speak Spanish well until she was an adult. In turn, her literature helped position her as a prominent Latina writer in the mid-1990s and 2000's.

"She opened the doors for many of us to look at what it means to be Chicana in a different way," said Jennie Luna, a long time friend of Serros and an assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at a California State University, Channel Islands, according to the Associated Press. "She liked to do surfing, she liked to do skateboarding ... She didn't feel constrained to living life one way as a Chicano in the world. She was really boundless."

Later in her career, she worked as a staff writer for "The George Lopez Show" as well as many other publications, reports NBC News. Furthermore, she went on to write two young adult novels, "Honey Blonde Chica" and its sequel "¡Scandalosa!," and become a regular contributor to National Public Radio.

Her husband, Antonio Magaña, announced that Serros had lost a 20-month battled with a rare form of oral cancer. She died Sunday at her home in Berkeley, California.

"For Michele, life was not a fight that was to be won or lost, but enjoyed as a wonderful journey and to be experienced with a firm sense of purpose, curiosity, tenacity, hard work and never-failing courage," her husband said.