Cristina Rivera Garza is the M.D. Anderson Distinguished Professor and director of the PhD program in creative writing in Spanish at the University of Houston. She studied urban sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and received her PhD in Latin American history from the University of Houston.
Rivera Garza is the author of six novels, three collections of short stories, five collections of poetry, and five works of creative nonfiction. Originally in Spanish, her works have been translated into multiple languages. The recipient of a MacArthur Award (2020), Roger Caillois Award for Latin American Literature (2013), and the Anna Seghers Prize (2005), she is the only author who has won the International Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize twice—in 2001 for her novel Nadie me verá llorar (translated into English by Andrew Hurley as No One Will See Me Cry) and in 2009 for her novel La muerte me da. She has translated, from English into Spanish, Notes on Conceptualisms by Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman; The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney; The Dead Girls Speak in Unison by Danielle Pafunda; and, from Spanish into English, “Nine Mexican Poets edited by Cristina Rivera Garza,” in New American Writing 31. She was a spring 2023 fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, the Breeden Eminent Scholar at Auburn University, a fellow at the University of California, San Diego, Center for Humanities, and received a Sistema Nacional de Creadores grant from Mexico, among other honors. Rivera Garza has also developed cross-genre collaborations with composers and artists, and published extensively in journals and edited volumes.
