Award-winning author, co-founder and editor of Aster(ix), and professor are just a few of the titles Angie Cruz holds. Cruz is currently an Associate Professor in the English Department in the Dietrich School as well as an affiliate of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.
Born in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, Cruz is of Dominican descent and as a child, would travel between the United States and the Dominican Republic. Before starting her writing career, she studied visual arts at La Guardia High School and later pursued a fashion design degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She eventually went on to receive her BA in English from SUNY Binghamton and her MFA in creative writing from New York University.
Cruz has published four books, beginning with Soledad in 2001 and Let it Rain Coffee in 2005, both with Simon and Schuster. In 2019 she published her third novel, Dominicana, which was the inaugural book pick for the GMA book club, a RUSA Notable Book (2000), winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. Dominicana was also shortlisted for The Women’s Prize and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
Her newest novel, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (2022), is currently a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. It is a winner of the Gold Medal, Latino Book Award/The Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Book Award and was shortlisted for The Aspen Words Literary Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. The New York Times chose it for their 100 Notable Books of 2022 in addition to The Washington Post for their 50 Notable Works of Fiction.
In addition to her numerous book awards, she has been awarded residencies through Yaddo, The Macdowell Colony, Fundación Valparaíso, La Napoule Foundation, and The Millay Colony. She has also received several grants for her writing and teaching including, the Barbara Deming Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Camargo Fellowship, the Van Lier Literary Fellowship, and the NALAC Fund for the Arts Fellowship.
In 2021 Angie was awarded the Gina Berriault award. She can be found splitting her time between Pittsburgh, New York, and Italy.