Urrea, Henriquez: Contemporary Latino Fiction

With his lush family saga, recounted in his novels The Hummingbird's Daughter and Queen of America, Luis Urrea has vividly brought the story of his ancestor Teresita Urrea to life. Spanning two centuries and ranging from a magical, rural Mexican village to 20th-century Manhattan, these books define not only Urrea's career but also the remarkable diversity of Latino/Latina fiction in America. In this program, Urrea, as the genre's established voice, introduces with excitement Cristina Henriquez, whose fiction brims with promise. For Henriquez, the Latina experience is one of dualism, rooted both in her father's native Panama and in the United States. In both the novel The World in Half and the story collection Come Together, Fall Apart, she plumbs Panamanians and Panamanian-Americans' perspectives with nuance and grace. Join Urrea and Henriquez for a wide-ranging conversation that will absorb writers and readers alike.

This program is presented in partnership with the UIC Institute for the Humanities and the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Luis Alberto Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, was born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother. The critically acclaimed and best-selling author of 13 books, Urrea has won numerous awards including the Lannan Literary Award and Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize (for The Devil's Highway) and the Kiriyama Prize in Fiction for The Hummingbird's Daughter. He is a professor of creative writing at UIC.

Cristina Henríquez is the author of the novel The World in Half, and of the short story collection Come Together, Fall Apart, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice selection. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, American Scholar, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere, and the Virginia Quarterly Review named her one of "Fiction's New Luminaries." She is also the recipient of an Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award.