University of Houston professor wins Pulitzer Prize in memoir

Local author and University of Houston professor Cristina Rivera Garza won a Pulitzer Prize Monday for her memoir, "Liliana’s Invincible Summer." The book tells a story of gender violence and a search for justice, as Rivera Garza details her return to Mexico City nearly 30 years after her younger sister, Liliana, was killed. "Liliana's Invincible Summer" was most recently named a finalist for a National Book Award, and was hailed in The New York Times Book Review for Rivera Garza's nuanced portrait of her sister. Rivera Garza is the University of Houston's MD Anderson Professor in Hispanic Studies and the director of the Creative Writing Program in Hispanic Studies. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and an award-winning author of six novels, three collections of short stories, five collections of poetry and three non-fiction books. The writer and professor was born in Tamaulipas, Mexico. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1989 and earned her Ph.D. in Latin American history from UH.