Poet, Novelist, Essayist, Professor

Hailed past NPR as a "literary badass" and a "chief storyteller with a rock and coil heart," Luis Alberto Urrea is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss, and triumph.

A 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and fellow member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Urrea is the critically acclaimed and best-selling writer of 17 books, winning numerous awards for his poetry, fiction, and essays. Built-in in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Urrea is most recognized every bit a border writer, though he says, "I am more than interested in bridges, not borders."

His newest book, The House of Broken Angels, is a novel of an American family, which happens to be from United mexican states. Angel de la Cruz knows this is his terminal birthday and he wants to gather his progeny for a final fiesta.

Last year, Urrea won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction award and his collection of brusque stories, The Water Museum, was a finalist for the 2016 PEN-Faulkner Award and was named a best book of the year byThe Washington Post andKirkus Reviews, among others. Into the Beautiful N, his 2009 a novel, is a Big Read pick past the National Endowment of the Arts and has been chosen by more than 50 different cities and colleges as a community read.The Devil's Highway, Urrea's 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize.The Hummingbird's Daughter, his 2005 historical novel, tells the story of Urrea's neat-aunt Teresa Urrea, sometimes known equally the Saint of Cabora and the Mexican Joan of Arc. The book, which involved xx years of research and writing, won the Kiriyama Prize in fiction and, along withThe Devil's Highway, was named a best volume of the year by many publications.

In all, more than than 100 cities and colleges have calledInto the Cute North, The Devil'due south Highway orThe Hummingbird's Daughter (or another Urrea book) for a community read.

Urrea has also won an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America for best short story (2009, "Amapola" in Phoenix Noir and featured inThe Water Museum).Into the Beautiful Due north earned a citation of splendid from the American Library Association Rainbow'southward Project. Urrea's first volume, Across the Wire, was named aNew York Times Notable Volume and won the Christopher Award. Urrea also won a 1999 American Book Honor for his memoir,Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life and in 2000, he was voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame post-obit the publication ofVatos. His book of brusk stories, 6 Kinds of Sky, was named the 2002 pocket-sized-press Book of the Year in fiction by the editors of ForeWord magazine. He has also won a Western States Book Laurels in verse forThe Fever of Being and was in the 1996 Best American Poetry collection. Urrea'due south other titles includeBy the Lake of Sleeping Children,In Search of Snowfall, Ghost Sickness, andWandering Fourth dimension.

Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate studies at the Academy of Colorado-Bedrock.

Later serving as a relief worker in Tijuana and a film extra and columnist-editor-cartoonist for several publications, Urrea moved to Boston where he taught expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard. He also taught at the Academy of Louisiana-Lafayette.

Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the Academy of Illinois-Chicago.