Novelist and editor Angie Cruz has been selected as the winner of the 43rd Dos Passos Prize for Literature, a literary award given annually by Longwood University to a talented American writer who experiments with form, explores a range of voices and merits further recognition.
Cruz is best known for her novels How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (2022), Dominicana (2019) and Let it Rain Coffee (2006). She was chosen by the Dos Passos Prize jury from a shortlist of five finalists, which included Luis Alberto Urrea, Victor Lavalle, Peter Rock and Carter Sickels.
Cruz will receive an honorarium and medal, and will visit Longwood’s campus this spring to receive the award and read from her work at a ceremony open to the public.
Angie Cruz’s fiction offers compelling depictions of the lives of working-class immigrant people in the United States, challenging the stereotypes that circulate in our culture through her inventive narratives.
Dr. David Magill, chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages Tweet This
“Angie Cruz’s fiction offers compelling depictions of the lives of working-class immigrant people in the United States, challenging the stereotypes that circulate in our culture through her inventive narratives,” said Dr. David Magill, professor of literatures of diversity and chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at Longwood. “She combines keen attention to language with storytelling that is at times playful, at times passionate, but always evocative and detailed. These characteristics are what make her such a worthy recipient of the Dos Passos Prize.”
Cruz, who is of Dominican heritage, was born in New York and traveled to and from New York City and the Dominican Republic for most of her formative years. She has written numerous books that revolve around themes of home, gender, race, displacement and working-class life.
Dominicana, which was short listed for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, was inspired by her mother’s arrival story. It was called “one of the most evocative and empowering immigrant stories of our time” by NBC News and described as “lovely and compelling” by the New York Times Book Review.
Her most recent novel, How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water (2022), was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and short listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It was chosen for the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022 and the Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction. In 2021, she was awarded the Gina Berriault Award, given annually to a writer who has shown a love of storytelling and a commitment to helping young writers.
The John Dos Passos Prize for Literature is the oldest literary award given by a Virginia college or university. It honors a writer whose work offers incisive, original commentary on American themes, experiments with form and encompasses a range of human experiences.
The 2024 Dos Passos Prize selection jury comprised last year’s winner, novelist Patricia Engel; Dr. Eric Waggoner, executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council; and Magill, who serves as chair of the jury.
Cruz has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies, including the Lighthouse Fellowship, Siena Art Institute, Yaddo and the Macdowell Arts Colony. She has a fashion design degree from Fashion Institute of Technology, an English literature bachelor’s degree from SUNY Binghamton and a master’s in fine art from New York University.
Cruz is currently an associate professor at University of Pittsburgh, where she is an affiliate of CAAPP: Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and the co-founder and editor of the award-winning literary journal Aster(ix).
The first John Dos Passos Award was given in 1980. Since that time, winners have included Shelby Foote (1988), Earnest J. Gaines (1993), Maxine Hong Kingston (1998), Colson Whitehead (2012), Ruth Ozeki (2014), Paul Beatty (2015), Karen Tei Yamashita (2018) and Rabih Alameddine (2019). Many of the past recipients have gone on to garner further acclaim. Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017 for The Underground Railroad and in 2020 for The Nickel Boys, and Beatty won the prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction in 2016 for his novel The Sellout.
Leave a Comment