Cristina Rivera Garza was born in Matamoros, Mexico. She is a writer, translator, and critic. Her recent publications include Liliana’s Invincible Summer, which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir; Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country, which was shortlisted for the 2021 NBCC Awards in Criticism; and The Taiga Syndrome,which won the 2018 Shirley Jackson Award. Some of her other recent awards include the Jose Donoso International Literary Award, Chile 2021 and the Alfonso Reyes Nuevo León International Literary Award, Mexico 2021, among others. She is the Hugh Rot and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair and founder of the PhD Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston, Department of Hispanic Studies.