Cristina Rivera Garza was born in Matamoros, Mexico. She is a writer, translator, critic. Recent publications include Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Pulitzer Prize Memoir 2024. Grieving. Dispatches from a Wounded Country was shortlisted for the 2021 NBCC Awards in criticism. The Taiga Syndrome won the Shirley Jackson Award 2018. Recent awards include: Jose Donoso International Literary Award, Chile 2021; Alfonso Reyes Nuevo León international Literary Award, Mexico 2021, among others. She is 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.