Description

“Dreaming in Spanish: How Mexico Informs the Writer’s Heart. No matter where I go in life, what I achieve, the echoes of a Mexican village — and the shadow of the Mexican border — fuel everything I do.”

Meet Luis Urrea

He is fully bicultural having grown up in Tijuana with a Mexican father and grandmother and an American mother, and his deeply dual perspective informs all of his writing.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his stunning novel, The Devil’s Highway, Urrea writes in all genres and is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of sixteen books.

He has won numerous awards for his poetry, fiction, and essays including Lannan Literary Award; the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize; an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America for best short story; a 1999 American Book Award for his memoir, Nobody’s Son; a Western States Book Award in poetry for The Fever of Being; and inclusion in The 1996 Best American Poetry collection.

His 2015 short-story collection, The Desert Museum, was named to several Best-of-2015 lists, including the Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews.

Luis has been voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame.

For a time, Luis taught creative writing at Harvard. Currently, he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.