Valeria Luiselli, major contemporary author whose work explores Mexican-American migration, identity and belonging, is a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree. Her 2019 novel, The Lost Children Archive, tells the story of a family road trip that collides with an immigration crisis at the southwestern border.

The New York Times named it one of the “10 Best Books of the Year.” It won the Rathbone Folio Prize 2020, the Dublin Award 2021, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Booker Prize, among others. Writing in Oprah’s O. magazine, Carmen Maria Machado said, “Not since Lolita has a road trip so brilliantly captured the dark underbelly of the American dream, the gulf between its promise and reality.” Her other bestselling books include The Story of My Teeth (2015) and Tell Me How It Ends (2016).

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Cosponsored by the Departments of Sociology; Africana, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies; the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project; UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI); and the Honors College.