Cristina Henríquez

Henríquez's father is from Panama and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971 for college;{{cite web|url=http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/three-questions-cristina-henriquez|title=Three Questions for Cristina Henríquez|last1=Olivas|first1=Daniel|date=April 27, 2014|website=Los Angeles Review of Books|accessdate=5 January 2015}} her mother is from New Jersey{{Cite news|url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/mundelein/lifestyles/ct-lfr-trend-webhenriquez-tl-0420-20170413-story.html|title=Author Cristina Henriquez visits Ragdale's 'Novel Affair'|last=Ingram|first=Bruce|date=April 13, 2017|work=Chicago Tribune|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en-US}} and worked in Delaware public schools as a translator.{{Cite news|url=http://artsatl.com/qa-cristina-henrique-the-book-unknown-americans/|title=Q&A: Cristina Henríquez gives voice to Latino immigrants in "Book of Unknown Americans"|last=Enjeti|first=Anjali|date=2015-05-14|work=ArtsATL|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en-US}} Henríquez was born in Delaware and attended school in the U.S., but spent summers in Panama.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/books/review/07beller.html|title=Fiction by Cristina Henríquez and Etgar Keret - The New York Times Book Review|last=Beller|first=Thomas|date=2006-05-07|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} She did not speak Spanish as a child and so on visits "had no choice but to sit there and observe" dynamics she later evoked in her writing, particularly the warmth and joy of family life among her father's relatives.{{Cite news|url=https://www.guernicamag.com/cristina-henriquez-the-stories-of-the-unknown/|title=Cristina Henríquez: The Stories of the Unknown|last=García|first=Michelle|date=2015-10-22|work=Guernica|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en-US}}

In a New Yorker essay, Henríquez has said "the honest-to-goodness and embarrassing story" of how her interest in writing began "is that I started writing in high school, and I did it for a boy." Uninterested in her frequently-professed affections for him, the boy in question gave her a journal and suggested that she instead write down everything she wanted to tell him and give them to him at the end of a year. She began the journal writing to him,

"But it didn't take long before I found I was writing for myself, and for the sheer enjoyment of the act of writing. I was hooked. I sat down at the end of each day and scribbled page after page, experimenting with new ways of saying things, and reveling in a feeling of absolute freedom."

Henríquez attended Northwestern University; she majored in English, graduating in 1999.{{Cite web|url=https://www.weinberg.northwestern.edu/about/academics/interdisciplinary-thinking/cristina-henriquez.html|title=Cristina Henríquez '99: Weinberg - Northwestern University|website=www.weinberg.northwestern.edu|language=en|access-date=2017-08-03}} She then earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.{{cite web|url=http://zulkey.com/2009/10/the-cristina-henriquez-intervi.shtml#.VKqhUHvCdyE|title=The Cristina Henríquez Interview|date=October 23, 2009|website=Zulkey|accessdate=5 January 2015}} She has described her time in the Iowa program as "a great experience",{{cite news|url=http://www.bustle.com/articles/27838-cristina-henriquez-talks-the-book-of-unknown-americans-poc-vs-mfa-and-compassion|title=Cristina Henriquez Talks 'The Book of Unknown Americans,' POC vs. MFA, and Compassion|last1=Luchette|first1=Claire|work=Bustle|accessdate=5 January 2015}} highly valuable both for validating her writing as well as developing her skills: "I have all my notebooks...and I still open them every once in a while to find something that Chris Offutt said about dialogue or something that Sam Chang said about structure or that Marilynne Robinson said about subordinate clauses. I could not have gotten that specific knowledge anywhere else." At the same time, responding to Junot Diaz's criticism of the "unbearable too-whiteness" MFA programs,{{Cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mfa-vs-poc|title=MFA vs. POC|last=Diaz|first=Junot|date=April 30, 2014|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=2017-08-03}} Henríquez notes that while in Iowa, she often spent her own time writing about Panama (which later became the setting for her first two books), but submitted only stories about the United States and American characters to her classes, subsequently wondering whether this choice stemmed from some sense that in the MFA setting, the stories on Panama "weren't going to be as acceptable, or that maybe they were going to be taken in a different way than the stories that were set in the United States and that I was trying in a way to inoculate myself."

Henríquez's fiction has appeared in various literary magazines. In 2006 she published in The New Yorker.{{cite magazine|last1=Henriquez|first1=Cristina|title=Carnival, Las Tablas|magazine=The New Yorker |date=25 June 2006 |url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/03/carnival-las-tablas|accessdate=5 January 2015}}

Her first book was a collection called Come Together, Fall Apart. Containing eight short stories and a novella, Come Together, Fall Apart was published on April 4, 2006 by Riverhead.{{Cite news|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cristina-henriquez/come-together-fall-apart/|title=COME TOGETHER, FALL APART A Novella and Stories by Cristina Henríquez|date=March 15, 2006|work=Kirkus Reviews|access-date=August 2, 2017}} Reviewing the collection in The New York Times, Thomas Beller said, "Henríquez's fiction provides intense close-ups of young Panamanians whose lives are in enormous flux...Always she appears to be probing for rare moments of grace."

Her debut novel, The World in Half, was published by Riverhead three years later, April 16, 2009.{{Cite news|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cristina-henriquez/the-world-in-half/|title=THE WORLD IN HALF by Cristina Henríquez|date=March 1, 2009|work=Kirkus Reviews|access-date=August 2, 2017}} The novel follows a young woman from Chicago who takes a trip to Panama to pursue family ties there. In The Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley described the book as an "engaging if slight first novel...sure to strike a familiar and affecting note with the many other residents of this country who are trying to reconcile divided identities as well as divided loyalties."{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042401582.html|title=Book Review: 'The World in Half,' by Cristina Henriquez|last=Yardley|first=Jonathan|date=2009-04-26|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en-US|issn=0190-8286}}

The Book of Unknown Americans, Henríquez's second novel, was published in 2014 with Knopf.{{Cite news|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cristina-henriquez/book-of-unknown-americans/|title=THE BOOK OF UNKNOWN AMERICANS by Cristina Henríquez|date=April 17, 2014|work=Kirkus Reviews|access-date=August 2, 2017}} The Daily Beast named it the 2014 novel of the year.{{Cite web|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/29/the-2014-novel-of-the-year|title=The 2014 Novel of the Year|last=Rich|first=Nathaniel|date=2014-12-29|website=The Daily Beast|access-date=2017-08-03}}

Henríquez's third novel, The Great Divide, was chosen as a Read with Jenna book club selection for March 2024 along with Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street for the five-year anniversary of the book club.{{Cite web |last=Kaplan |first=Anna |date=March 4, 2024 |title=Jenna Bush Hager has two March 2024 Read With Jenna picks |url=https://www.today.com/popculture/books/read-with-jenna-book-club-pick-march-2024-rcna140877 |access-date=March 5, 2024 |website=Today}}

Henríquez has also contributed to the anthologies This Is Not Chick Lit (Random House, 2006){{Cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6160671|title=Fiction Anthology Refuses 'Chick Lit' Label|date=September 28, 2006|work=NPR|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en}} and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers (Harper, 2008).{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/books/15kaku.html|title=30 Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers - Edited by Susan Morrison - Book Review|last=Kakutani|first=Michiko|date=2008-01-15|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-08-03|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}

Henríquez lives in Chicago, Illinois.

• 21st Century Award, Chicago Public Library Foundation, 2024.{{Cite web |date=2024-06-25 |title=Chance the Rapper, Ann Patchett and Cristina Henríquez win 2024 Library Foundation awards |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/06/25/chicago-public-library-foundation-awards/ |access-date=2024-06-26 |website=Chicago Tribune |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |title=Meet the 2024 Library Foundation Award Honorees |url=https://cplfoundation.org/awards/honorees/ |access-date=2024-06-26 |website=Chicago Public Library Foundation |language=en-US}}
• 2020 Fiction judge for the National Book Awards
• Recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award

• Come Together, Fall Apart (Riverhead, 2006)
• The World in Half (Riverhead, 2009)
• The Book of Unknown Americans (Knopf, 2014)
• The Great Divide (Ecco Press, 2024)

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{{Wikiquote|Cristina Henríquez}}

• [http://www.cristinahenriquez.com/ Official website]
• [https://www.loc.gov/item/2016686132 Cristina Henríquez recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division’s audio literary archive on Mar. 15, 2015]

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Category:Living people

Category:Writers from Delaware

Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni

Category:Hispanic and Latino American writers

Category:Hispanic and Latino American novelists

Category:American women novelists

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:American people of Panamanian descent

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:Northwestern University alumni

Category:Place of birth missing (living people)