Raised in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, Castillo credits the powerful storytelling tradition of her Mexican heritage as the foundation and inspiration for her writing. By the time she graduated from college, Castillo had already begun to establish herself as a dynamic poetic voice: she published poems in anthologies and magazines as a college student, and three volumes of poetry followed shortly thereafter.
In the mid-1980’s, Castillo turned to fiction.
So Far From God, her first novel to be widely read, was published in 1993. Blending aspects of magical realism with a powerful family narrative and strong feminist undertones, the book marked Castillo as one of the country’s most gifted and engaging Latina writers. Publications following this include the short story collection
Loverboys, which
Booklist called “defiant, satirically hilarious, sexy, and wise” and the novel
Peel My Love Like an Onion, praised by
Publishers Weekly for being “sardonic and seductive…[a] compulsively readable narrative.”
Castillo’s most recent novel,
The Guardians, follows the lives of Mexican immigrants who illegally cross the border into the United States. Combining crushing realism with mystical transcendence,
The Guardians centers on a family devastated by deaths and disappearances. Ultimately, “Castillo’s incandescent novel of suffering and love traces life’s movement toward the light even in the bleakest of places” (
Booklist starred review). Perhaps Castillo’s most lauded achievement to date,
The Guardians is “a moving book that is both intimate and epic” (Oscar Hijuelos) and a story which “stirs the spirit and fills the heart” (
The Boston Globe).
Susan Straight, author of
A Million Nightingales, says that
The Guardians “gives America exactly what it needs--her vision of a border that most people never see...and a story that will not let us go. Her voice is singular, and her talents are on full display here. Everyone needs to visit her world.”
Castillo has been a contributor to many anthologies, including
The Third Woman: Minority Woman Writers of the United States,
Cuentos Chicanos and
Goddess of the Americas, and her writings have been published in
Frontiers,
The Los Angeles Times,
The Nation,
The San Francisco Chronicle, and
The Washington Post, among others.
In addition to her own prolific writing career, Castillo is passionately involved in nurturing the voices of other authors. She is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of La Tolteca, an arts and literary zine dedicated to the advancement of a world without borders and censorship, and is on the advisory board of the new American Writers Museum in Washington, D.C. Castillo held the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University, The Martin Luther King, Jr Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at M.I.T. and was the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College in Utah, among other teaching positions.
In her lectures, Castillo speaks about the craft of storytelling as well as Xicana identity and culture. She currently lives between New Mexico and Chicago, where she is teaching memoir writing in the MA/MFA writing program at Northwestern University.
Selected Writings- Give It to Me (forthcoming, The Feminist Press)
- Massacre of the Dreamers: 20th Anniversary Edition (forthcoming, University of New Mexico Press)
- The Guardians (Random House, 2008)
- Psst...I Have Something To Tell You, Mi Amor (Wings Press, 2005)
- Peel My Love Like an Onion (Doubleday, 1999)
- Loverboys (W.W. Norton, 1996)
- Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe (Riverhead Books, 1996)
- So Far From God (W.W. Norton, 1993)
Awards2009 Americo Paredes Award for contributions in literature, University of Texas-Austin
2006 IPPY Award, Outstanding Book of the Year, "Story Teller of the Year" category, for
The Guardians 1994 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for
So Far From God1993 Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction for
So Far From God1990 & 1995 National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for poetry
1986 American Book Award for
The Mixquiahuala Letters
Media
Watch Ana Castillo at Earlham College discussing the untold stories of the endurance of Latinas: