Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez
at 2016 Fall for the Book
Occupation	professor
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Trinidadian
Alma mater	Marian College, New York University
Genres	novel, memoir

Elizabeth Nunez is a Trinidadian American novelist and distinguished professor of English at Hunter College–CUNY, New York City.

Her novels have won a number of awards: Prospero's Daughter received the New York Times Editors' Choice and 2006 Novel of the Year from Black Issues Book Review,Bruised Hibiscus won the 2001 American Book Award, and Beyond the Limbo Silence won the 1999 Independent Publishers Book Award. In addition, Nunez was shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Discretion;Boundaries was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice and nominated for a 2012 NAACP Image Award; and Anna In-Between was selected for the 2010 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence as well as a New York Times Editors' Choice and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal.

As early as nine-years old Nunez began writing and won the first place prize for the Tiny Tots writing contest in the Trinidad Guardian. Nunez emigrated from Trinidad to the United States after completing high school at age 19 in 1963.

Nunez arrived in the United States at age 19 to earn a BA in English from Marian College in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and a MA and PhD in Literature from New York University. Nunez began teaching at Medgar Evers College in 1972, a year after the college was established, and was instrumental in developing its writing curriculum. Now, she is a distinguished professor at Hunter College and the author of eight novels as well as co-editor with Jennifer Sparrow of Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad, co-editor with Brenda Greene of the collection of essays, Black Writers in the 90's, and author of several monographs of literary criticism.