Valeria Luiselli

Valeria Luiselli is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction whose books are forthcoming and published in more than 20 languages.

A 2019 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she is the author of the novels Lost Children Archive (2019); The Story of My Teeth (2015), named Best Book in Fiction by the Los Angeles Times, one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, and a National Book Critics Circle finalist; and Faces in the Crowd (2014), for which she received a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” prize, among other honors. In her recent nonfiction book, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions, she demonstrates the impossibility of giving coherent, narrative form to the harrowing and fragmented statements that the immigration intake questionnaire elicits from children facing deportation. It won the 2017 American Book Award and was a National Book Critics Circle and Kirkus Prize finalist.

She previously taught at Hofstra University, City College, the New York University MFA Writing Program in Paris, and Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program. She founded the Teenage Immigrant Integration Association at Hofstra in 2015, a program that offers continuous support to immigrant and refugee teens through one-on-one English classes, soccer games, and civil rights education. 

Photo credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

 

Luiselli joined the Dialogue as a Member in 2019.

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