Luis Alberto Urrea is a prolific and award-winning writer, a master storyteller who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. In all of his work, Luis encourages empathy and compassion for our shared humanity.

The author of 17 books, he has published extensively in various genres and has received many prestigious awards. The Devil’s Highway, his non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the Lannan Literary Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was called, “the single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy” by The Atlantic. His highly acclaimed historical novels; The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Queen of America together tell the epic story of Teresita Urrea, a great aunt who was a healer and Mexican folk hero. Luis is also the author of Into the Beautiful North, The House of Broken Angels, and his latest, Good Night, Irene, which takes as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service. With its affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene powerfully demonstrates yet again that Urrea’s “gifts as a storyteller are prodigious” (NPR). Throughout his career, Luis has established himself as a passionate and prolific voice urging readers to break down borders instead of putting up walls.

Mariah Rigg is the author of the short story collection Extinction Capital of the World (Ecco, 2025). Her chapbook, All Hat, No Cattle was published by Bull City Press in 2023. Mariah’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Mount, Oregon Literary Arts, Carolyn Moore Writers’ House, and Lambda Literary, along with being published by The Sewanee Review, Oxford American, Electric Lit, The Common, Joyland, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is a PhD candidate from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.