Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of 19 books, winning numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Urrea is most recognized as a border writer, though he says, “I am more interested in bridges, not borders.”

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. His latest novel, Good Night Irene, was an instant New York Times bestseller and is based on his mother’s service as a Red Cross “Donut Dolly” serving troops on the frontlines of the European theater in WWII. The House of Broken Angels, was a 2018 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and named to many best of the year lists. He won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction award in 2016 for his collection of short stories, The Water Museum, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

His first book, Across the Wire, was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the Christopher Award.

Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.