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This author appeared at the 2009 festival. Please view the list of authors appearing at this year's festival or see our suggestions for similar authors below.
 Luis Alberto Urrea
In Urrea's subtly satirical and big-hearted new novel Into the Beautiful North, 19-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village – they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men – her own "Siete Magníficos" – to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over. Filled with unforgettable characters, Into the Beautiful North is the story of an irresistible young woman's quest to find herself on both sides of the fence. "Awash in a subtle kind of satire...A funny and poignant impossible journey," Roberto Ontiveros wrote about the book in The Dallas Morning News. "Into the Beautiful North is a refreshing antidote to all the negativity currently surrounding Mexico." Urrea’s previous books include The Hummingbird's Daughter, The Devil's Highway, Across the Wire, and By the Lake of Sleeping Children. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an American mother, he has received numerous prizes for his fiction, poetry, and journalism, including a Lannan Literary Award, a Christopher Award, the Kiriyama Prize, an American Book Award, and a Western States Book Award; he has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. Urrea has taught at Harvard, the University of Colorado, and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and is currently a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
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