Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Sabrina & Corina: Stories. penguin random house. 2019.
Kali Fajardo-Anstine | |
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American Book Award Guggenheim Fellowship |
Kali Fajardo-Anstine (born November 9, 1986) is an American novelist and short story writer from Denver, Colorado. She won the 2020 American Book Award for Sabrina & Corina: Stories and was a 2019 finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Her first novel, Woman of Light: A Novel (2022), is a national bestseller and won the 2023 WILLA Literary Award in Historical Fiction. She is the 2022–2024 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow.
Early life
Kali Fajardo-Anstine was born in Denver, Colorado in 1986. Her parents are Renee Fajardo and Glen Anstine. She is the second eldest of six siblings, five sisters and one brother.[1]
She struggled with depression[2] growing up because she didn’t feel she fit in culturally or socially with her peers, and turned to books and writing for comfort.[3]
After being pushed to leave high school by an unsupportive English teacher, Fajardo-Anstine dropped out and earned her GED. She worked as a bookseller in Denver while studying English and Chicano/a studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she first began to write early drafts of short stories.[3]
In 2013, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from University of Wyoming.,[1] where she studied under writers Brad Watson and Joy Williams. Her graduate thesis created the foundation for her award-winning debut collection, Sabrina & Corina.[1]
Career
Fajardo-Anstine's work often features
In 2019, her debut collection of short stories, Sabrina & Corina, was published by
In 2022, after over a decade of research on her family history in Colorado, Fajardo-Anstine published her debut novel, Woman of Light. The Guardian described the novel as, "a feat of old school storytelling."
Fajardo-Anstine is inspired by the absence of Chicano or Latinx culture in the histories or narratives of the American West. In the Denver Public Library Western Genealogy Archives and most other traditional archives, White history is overrepresented. She found relics like an infant-size Ku Klux Klan robe with initials stitched in, yet she could not find information about indigenous and native Americans of Mexican descent. She saw that City of Denver's report on Mexican American/Chicano/Latino history in Denver had listed her great aunt Lucero's home as an important site, but there was no attribution to Lucero's daughter or other family members who shared stories about the home. The report also misspelled Lucero's name, and her family asked that information be removed.[1][9]
In 2023, Fajardo-Anstine wrote a new introduction to Willa Cather's classic novel Death Comes for the Archbishop that was published by Penguin Classics.[10]
Her work is often taught in high school and college classes throughout the United States.[11]
Selected works
Books
- Woman of Light: A Novel (2022) [14]
Short Stories
- "Remedies" in Electric Literature
- "All Her Names" in The American Scholar
- "The Yellow Ranch" in O, The Oprah Magazine
- "Star" in Freeman's: Animals
Essays
- "But You Can’t Stay Here" in Harper's Bazaar
- "On Roots and Research" in Gay
- "The “Old Universal Truths” of Arturo Islas" in Library of America
- Criticism
- Book Reviews
Awards and honors
Year | Title | Award | Category | Result | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2019 | Sabrina & Corina | National Book Award | Fiction | Finalist | [16] |
2020 | American Book Award | Winner | [17] | ||
The Story Prize | Finalist | [18] | |||
2023 | Woman of Light | Carol Shields Prize for Fiction | Longlist | [19] | |
Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize | Longlist | [20] | |||
Reading the West | Winner | [21] | |||
WILLA Literary Award | Historical Fiction | Winner | [22] |
References
- ^ a b c d e Monaghan, Shane (1 June 2022). "Inside Denver Author Kali Fajardo-Anstine's Much Anticipated Debut Novel". 5280. Colorado.
- ^ Warner, Ryan (8 July 2022). "Denver novelist Kali Fajardo-Anstine on the decade it took to write 'Woman of Light'". Colorado Public Radio.
- ^ a b González, Rigoberto (1 June 2022). "Keeping the Stories: A Profile of Kali Fajardo-Anstine". Poets & Writers.
- ^ Bohlen, Teague (3 April 2019). "Kali Fajardo-Anstine on Sabrina & Corina, Heritage and Home". Westword. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
- ^ Turner, Elliott (8 April 2019). "Sabrina & Corina". Latino Book Review. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
- ^ "Keeping the Stories: A Profile of Kali Fajardo-Anstine". Poets & Writers . 1 August 2022. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- ^ "Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine review – haunted by lost lands". The Guardian. 18 June 2022. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
- ^ "Kali Fajardo-Anstine Reclaims Her Ancestors' Stories". Latino USA. 28 June 2022. Retrieved 23 April 2023.
- ^ City of Denver. "Nuestras Historias: Mexican American/Chicano/Latino Histories in Denver An Historic Context" (PDF). Denver the Mile High City.
- ^ Kali-Fajardo-Anstine-in-Praise-of-Willa-Cather-and-the-American-Southwest (24 September 2021). "Kali Fajardo-Anstine in Praise of Willa Cather and the American Southwest". lithub.com. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
- ^ "Fiction Craft Seminar Summer 2021" (PDF). as.nyu.edu. 24 September 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
- ^ Sabrina & Corina: Stories. penguin random house. 2019.
- ISBN 9780525511328.
- ^ "Winners 2020-2029". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Retrieved 21 August 2023.
- ^ Dwyer, Colin (20 November 2019). "National Book Awards Handed To Susan Choi, Arthur Sze And More". NPR. Archived from the original on 22 December 2023. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
- ^ The Associated Press (15 September 2020). "George Takei, Ocean Vuong and more win American Book Awards". USA Today. Archived from the original on 22 December 2023. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
- ^ "The Story Prize 2020". The Story Prize. Retrieved 22 September 2023.
- ^ Deborah Dundas, "5 Canadians nominated for first Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for women and non-binary writers, worth $150,000 (U.S.)". Toronto Star, March 8. 2023.
- ^ "Longlist for JCOP 2020-2029". New Literary Project. Retrieved 21 August 2023.
- ^ "Reading the West Winner 2023". Reading the West. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
- ^ "The WILLA Literary Award – Women Writing the West". Retrieved 21 August 2023.