Lost Children Archive (Luiselli) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—August 16, 1983
• Where—Mexico City, Mexico
• Education—B.A., National Autonomous University of Mexico; Ph.D., Columbia University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York, New York


Valiera Luiselli is a Mexican-born author and academic, who lives in the United States. Her most recent novel Lost Children Archive was published in 2019.

Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Africa. She has since lived in the U.S., Costa Rica, South Korea, India, Spain, and France. After earning a B.A. in Philosophy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Luiselli moved to New York City to dance.

After a time, Luiselli returned to academia, studying Comparative Literature at Columbia University and completing her Ph.D. Currently, she lives in New York City, where she teaches literature and creative writing at Hofstra University. She also collaborates as a writer with a number of art galleries and has worked as a librettist for the New York City Ballet.

Writing and recognition
Luiselli is the author of the book of essays Sidewalks (2013) and the internationally acclaimed novel Faces in the Crowd (2012), which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her novel The Story of My Teeth (2015) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Los Angeles Times Prize for Best Fiction and the Azul Prize in Canada.

Her most recent nonfiction book, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions (2017), was described by the Texas Observer as "the First Must-Read Book of the Trump Era." It was also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.

In 2014 Luiselli was the recipient of the National Book Foundation "5 under 35" award. Luiselli's books have been translated into more than 20 languages, and her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Granta, McSweeney’s and The New Yorker. (From various online sources including Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/7/2019.)