"Destination America"
Named one of “Fiction’s New Luminaries” by the Virginia Quarterly Review, Cristina Henríquez is the author of The World in Half and Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. She was also a recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award, a grant started by Sandra Cisneros. Henríquez earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A resident of Dallas for a number of years, she currently lives in Chicago.
Her forthcoming novel is The Book of Unknown Americans (June 3). Cristina Henríquez’s father came to Newark, Delaware, from Panama; she began this novel thinking she’d tell his story. But she wound up painting on a broader canvas, giving us a page-turning story about the “unknown Americans” who live in small towns all across this country. Author Ben Fountain praised the book, calling it “a triumph. Henríquez pulls us into the lives of her characters with such mastery that we hang on them just as fiercely as they hang on to one another and their dreams. This passionate, powerful novel stays with you long after you read the final page.” Suspenseful, funny, and rich in spirit, The Book of Unknown Americans offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be American.