Patricia Engel is a Colombian-American author, professor, and editor. Engel was the first woman to be awarded Colombia’s national prize in literature, the 2017 Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, for Vida (2010). The San Francisco Chronicle called Engel "a unique and necessary voice for the Americas."
Engel was born to Colombian parents who immigrated to the US. She was raised in New Jersey and attended public schools. She earned a bachelor's degree in French and Art History from New York University in 1999 and an MFA in fiction from Florida International University in 2007.
Patricia Engel also studied in Paris. Now she is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami.
She began her career in media. Engel writes about immigration, biculturalism, and transnationalism. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Ploughshares, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, etc.
Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, Catapult, and numerous anthologies.
Her debut Vida set the story of Sabina, who moves with her family from Bogotá to New Jersey. It became a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and the Young Lions Fiction Award. The book was the winner of a Florida Book Award, International Latino Book Award, and Independent Publisher Book Award, and named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
She is also the author of It's Not Love, It's Just Paris (2013), which won the International Latino Book Award, and the novel The Veins of the Ocean (2016), which won the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
In 2021 Patricia Engel released the book Infinite Country (2021), which became a New York Times Bestseller, a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, Reese’s Book Club pick, Esquire Book Club, Amazon Best Book of the Year, and more.
Infinite Country won the New American Voices Award, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
Engel’s books have been translated into many languages.
Her next book, a short story collection titled The Faraway World, will be published in 2023.
Patricia Engel now lives between Miami and New York.
Photo credit: patriciaengel.com
