Jennine Capó Crucet Assistant Professor, MFA University of Minnesota (2006) specializes in fiction and non-fiction. Her first book, How to Leave Hialeah, was selected by Curtis Sittenfeld for the Iowa Short Fiction Award; she is the first Latina to win this prize in its forty-year history. The book also received the John Gardner Book Prize and the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award in Prose and was a finalist for the Chicano/Latino Literary Award; it went on to be named a best book of the year by the Miami Herald, the New Times, and the Latinidad List. The collection's title story won a PEN/O. Henry Prize and appears in the O. Henry Prize Anthology (2011, Vintage/Anchor Books). Her work has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Epoch, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, and other magazines.

Crucet served as the fiction editor for the most recent edition of the PEN Center USA's Handbook for Writers, which is used in their Emerging Voices and Writers in the Schools programs. A former sketch comedienne and scriptwriter for NPR's The Writer's Almanac, Crucet has also worked in the non-profit sector as an advisor to first-generation college students from low-income families living in the South Central Los Angeles area. She is currently working on a novel set in her native Miami and based on the story published in the PEN/O. Henry anthology.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Books

• How to Leave Hialeah, University of Iowa Press, 2009.

Other Work

• PEN Center USA: Handbook for Writers, Fiction Editor, PEN USA, 2011.
• "What Some Other Guys Can Call The Byron Story: Miami, 1996," Virginia Quarterly Review, 2011.
• "Just the Way She Does the Things," Los Angeles Review, 2010.
• "Men Who Punched Me in the Face," Gulf Coast, 2010.
• "Damaris Dice: Stand-In Advice Columnist for Latina Magazine," The Rumpus, 2010.
• "Mister Empanada," World Literature Today, 2010.
• "Getting Lost in the City," Post Road, 2010.
• "Not Another South Florida," FORUM Magazine, 2010.
• "How to Leave Hialeah," Epoch, 2009.
• "The Next Move," The Southern Review, 2009.
• "Relapsing, Remitting," Crazyhorse, 2009.
• "Animal Control," The Potomac Review, 2009.
• "Drift," Five Chapters, 2009.
• "Noche Buena," The Northwest Review, 2006.
• "Resurrection, Or: The Story Behind the Failure of the 2003 Radio Salsa 98.1 Semi-Annual Cuban and/or Puerto Rican Heritage Festival," Ploughshares, 2006.

HONORS AND AWARDS

• PEN/O. Henry Prize, 2011.
• John Gardner Book Award, 2010.
• Devil's Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, 2010.
• Miami New Times Best Book of the Year, 2010.
• Named a "Top Ten New Latino Author to Watch (and Read)" by LatinoStories.com, 2010.
• Named a Miami Herald Best Book of the Year, 2009.
• Iowa Short Fiction Award, 2009.
• The Latinidad List Best Book of the Year, 2009.
• John Winthrop Prize & Residency for Emerging Writers, 2009.