Erika L. Sánchez

Erika L. Sánchez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her debut poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion, was a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award. Her debut young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter was a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Awards finalist, and Tomás Rivera Award winner. Time has recognized it as one of the best YA novels of all time. It is now is being made into a film directed by America Ferrera. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter has also been adapted to the theater at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and Seattle Rep Theater. Most recently, Sánchez published a critically acclaimed memoir-in-essays titled Crying in the Bathroom with Viking Books. It won the Chicago Review of Books Nonfiction award. Sánchez was a Fulbright Scholar, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent fellow from the Poetry Foundation, a Princeton Arts Fellow, a recipient of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation, and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She lives in Chicago with her family.