Cristina Rivera Garza

Cristina Rivera Garza (born October 1, 1964) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Mexican author and professor known for her fiction and memoir. Multiple novels, including Nadie me verá llorar (No One Will See Me Cry), received Mexico’s highest literary awards and international honors. Born in the state of Tamaulipas, near the U.S.–Mexico border, she is a teacher and a writer who has worked in both the United States and Mexico. She taught history and creative writing at various universities and institutions, including the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Tec de Monterrey, Campus Toluca, and University of California, San Diego, but currently holds a position at the University of Houston. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2020, and other recent accolades include the Juan Vicente Melo National Short Story Award, the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (Rivera Garza is one of two authors to win this award twice), and the Anna Seghers Prize.

Her 2023 memoir, Liliana's Invincible Summer, which documents her sister's life and her 1990 murder at the age of twenty by a boyfriend, was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction and won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography. The book paints a portrait of her sister's life as well as investigating the causes of and society's response to intimate partner violence.

Life Rivera Garza was born on October 1, 1964 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in the northeast of Mexico near the border with the United States. She is fluent in English and Spanish and has had a desire to write since her teenage years.

She did her undergraduate studies at ENEP-Acatlán (part of UNAM) in sociology, then went on to study her master’s in Latin American history at UNAM. Her doctoral thesis was on the subjection of the human body to state power in mental asylums in early 20th-century Mexico. Rivera Garza spent some of her “decisive years” studying in Mexico City, which she says has given her a personal and intimate relationship with Mexico’s capital, featured in her novel Nadie me verá llorar. However, she never permanently moved to the capital, which is Mexico’s literary center, making her feel outside of the country’s literary scene. She has also stated that she does not like the concentration of Mexico’s culture in the capital. Rivera Garza maintains interests in narrative, history, and the nature of human language/communication.

Teaching career Rivera Garza has always had a full-time job in teaching, which limits her time for creative writing, for which she is better known. In 2001, CECUT/Centro Cultural de Tijuana invited her to teach a class in creative writing, which she says changed her "personal dynamics, a lot of my relationships with Mexico" being in a Spanish dominant academic environment again.

Writing career

Rivera Garza is one of the most prolific Mexican writers in her generation,

Philosophy and style Rivera Garza’s works have been described as a "disturbing pleasure". As a writer, she aims to darken things and make readers suspicious, believing that "there is too much light and clarity in the world" as well as too much communication and messaging. She does not write to create stories, nor to express herself or convince her readers to her point of view. Instead, she believes she is producing a kind of reality, agreeing with poet Caridad Ascensio that books provide travel through a state of mind.

Her work has earned her various forms of recognition, starting in the 1980s with the Punto de Partida Poetry Competition in 1984 for Apuntes and the San Luis Potosí National Short Story Prize in 1987 for La guerra no importa.

In 2012, Rivera Garza received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Houston.

She is also the recipient of the Roger Caillois Award for Latin American Literature (Paris, 2013).

In 2020, she was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" grant.

In December 2024, Rivera Garza was included on the BBC's 100 Women list.

She won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir-Autobiography for her book El invencible verano de Liliana / Liliana's Invincible Summer.

In 2025, Rivera Garza was appointed Curator in Residence at the Berlin International Literature Festival.

List of awards José Rubén Romero National Book Award (1997) IMPAC-CONARTE-ITESM Award (1999) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, for Nadie me verá llorar (2001) Rómulo Gallegos Iberoamerican Award runner-up for La cresta de Illón (2003) Anna Seghers Prize (2005) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, for La muerte me da (2009) Roger Caillois Award for Latin American Literature (2013) Shirley Jackson Award for the English translation of El mal de la taiga (2018) Pulitzer Prize for Memoir-Autobiography, El invencible verano de Liliana / Liliana's Invincible Summer (2024)

Publications Rivera Garza’s work has been translated into English, Portuguese, German, Italian, and Korean. Lo anterior (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2004). La muerte me da (Mexico City/Barcelona: Tusquets, 2007). Death Takes Me, translated by Sarah Booker & Robin Myers, 2025 Verde Shanghai (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2011). El mal de la taiga (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2012) The Taiga Syndrome, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana (Dorothy, US, 2018; And Other Stories, UK, 2019). Autobiografía del algodón (Literatura Random House, 2020) Autobiography of Cotton, translated by Christina MacSweeney, (Graywolf Press, 2026)

Short-story collections La guerra no importa (Mexico City: Mortiz, 1991). San Luis Potosí National Book Award, 1987. Ningún reloj cuenta esto (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2002). Juan Vicente Melo National Book Award, 2001. La frontera más distante (Mexico City/Barcelona: Tusquets, 2008). Allí te comerán las turicatas (Mexico City: La Caja de Cerillos Ediciones/DGP, 2013).

Opera Viaje - in collaboration with Javier Torres Maldonado, work commissioned by the Festival Internacional Cervantino.

Poetry La más mía (Mexico City: Tierra Adentro, 1998). Los textos del yo (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005). La muerte me da (Toluca: ITESM-Bonobos, 2007). El disco de Newton, diez ensayos sobre el color (Mexico City: Dirección de Literatura, UNAM, Bonobos, 2011). Viriditas (Guadalajara: Mantis/UANL, 2011).

Non-fiction La Castañeda. Narrativas dolientes desde el Manicomio General, 1910-1930 (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2010). Dolerse. Textos desde un país herido (Mexico City: Sur+, 2011). Los muertos indóciles. Necroescrituras y desapropiación (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2013). Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice. 2023

As editor Romper el hielo: Novísimas escrituras al pie de un volcán (Toluca: ITESM-Bonobos, 2006). La novela según los novelistas (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007). Romper el hielo: Novísimas escrituras al pie de un volcán. El lugar (re) visitado (Mexico City: Feria del Libro, Secretaría de Cultura, GDF, 2007). Rigo es amor. Una rocola de dieciséis voces (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2013).

Translations From Spanish into English: "Nine Mexican Poets Edited by Cristina Rivera-Garza," in New American Writing #31.

From English into Spanish: Notas sobre conceptualismos (Mexico City: Conaculta, 2013). "Por la niebla del nosotros" translation and introduction of Juliana Sphar, in Nexos. Translations of poems by Don Mee Choi, Edwin Torres, Juliana Sphar, Harryette Mullen, among others, included in Los muertos indóciles. Necroescrituras y desapropiación.