The collection contains correspondence with virtually every prominent literary figure in Latin America during the mid-to-late Twentieth Century, including Pablo Neruda, Salvador Allende, Augusto Roa Bastos, Jaime Alazraki, Isabel Allende, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Nicanor Parra, and many others. Also includes correspondence with North American authors such as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as Linus Pauling.The collection also contains numerous manuscripts by Alegria and other Latin American authors, including Raul Barrientos, Jorge Bernales, Alejo Carpentier, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho, Roque Dalton, Humberto Diaz-Casanueva, Juan Armando Epple, Mario Antonio Espinosa, Ricardo Israel, Reynaldo Jimenez, Luis Merino, and Pablo Neruda.
The collection also contains more than 3,000 photographs and slides of Alegria, his family, various authors and other literary figures, as well as images used in his various books. The collection includes a series of 31 political posters from the 1960's with additional posters for readings given by Alegria from the 1970's through the 1980's, as well as performances by Chilean cultural groups, such as Inti-Illimani.
Box 39, folder 14 includes material removed from various books in the Fernando Alegría papers that were not included in the original processing of the papers. Included is an article by Luis Leal, typed poems by Jermain Flores Vera, and letters from Jorge Kattan Zablah, Maria Eugenia Urrutia, Alfonso Romano de Sant'Anna, and Enrique Ratinoff among others. There is also an unsigned typescript and a carbon typescript, "La cueca larga," the latter by Fernando Alegría.