The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection presents an evening with Cristina Rivera Garza, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Liliana’s Invincible Summer and MacArthur Fellow. The Benson has recently acquired the archive of the renowned author, critic, and translator.
Born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, near the U.S.–Mexico border, Rivera Garza is one of Mexico's most influential and innovative contemporary writers. Defying traditional literary genres, her writing blends historical research, speculative fiction, and linguistic experimentation to challenge dominant narratives and conventional storytelling.
Rivera Garza won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024 for Liliana’s Invincible Summer, originally published in Spanish as El invencible verano de Liliana (2021). She has been the recipient of Mexico’s most prestigious literary accolades, including the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, which she won twice.
The book “represents one of the author's most intimate and politically charged works,” said Lauren Peña, Head of Collection Development at the Benson. “It serves as a tribute to her younger sister, Liliana Rivera Garza, who was tragically murdered by her ex-boyfriend in the summer of 1990. Written decades later, the book functions both as an act of remembrance and a form of literary justice.”
Writing in the New York Review of Books, author Jonathan Lethem referred to Rivera Garza as “one of Mexico’s greatest living writers.”
Cristina Rivera Garza is Hugh Rot and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair and founder of the PhD Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston, Department of Hispanic Studies. She was a 2020–2025 MacArthur Fellow.
This event is free and open to the public. An audience Q&A will follow the author’s remarks, and will be moderated by Moody College of Journalism professor Celeste González de Bustamante, director of the Center for Global Change and Media.
For more information, contact Susanna Sharpe.
Photo: Juan Rodrigo Llaguno
