About

Patricia Engel is the author of five works of fiction. Her most recent book, a short story collection titled The Faraway World, was published in January 2023 and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Washington Post Notable Book, and a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year.

Her novel Infinite Country was a New York Times Bestseller, a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, Reese’s Book Club pick, Indie Next pick, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Best Book of the Year, and more. Infinite Country won the New American Voices Award, a Florida Book 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.

Her other books include The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and the Young Lions Fiction Award, winner of Colombia’s Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, a Florida Book Award, International Latino Book Award and Independent Publisher Book Award, longlisted for the Story Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Patricia has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and an O. Henry Award. Her books have been translated into many languages and selected as an NEA Big Read.

Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Ploughshares, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Oprah Daily, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Catapult, and in numerous anthologies including Tales of Two Americas and Cuba on the Verge.

Born to Colombian parents and raised in New Jersey, Patricia is a graduate of New York University and earned her MFA at Florida International University. She is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami.