Distance Between Us (Grande) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—September 7, 1975
• Where—Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico
• Education—B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz;
   M.F.A., Antioch University
• Awards—Latino Books Into Movies Award; American
   Book Award; El Premio Aztlan Literary Award;
   International Latino Book Awards
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California, USA


Reyna Grande is a Mexican immigrant author best known for her award winning novel Across a Hundred Mountains (2006) which, though a work of fiction, draws heavily on Grande's experiences growing up in Mexico and her illegal immigration to the United States. Her second novel, Dancing with Butterflies (2009), also garnered critical acclaim and awards.

In 2012, Grande published her memoir, The Distance Between Us, a coming-of-age story based on her experiences as an undocumented immigrant. In a December 6, 2012 interview in by the Los Angeles Review of Books, Grande explained why she decided to part from fiction to tell her story:

Even though my novels are very personal, and the material I write about is drawn from my own experience, they are fictional stories. After I completed my second novel, I wanted to write the real story about my life, before and after illegally immigrating to the US from Mexico. I wanted to shed light on the complexities of immigration and how immigration affected my entire family in both positive and negative ways.

The memoir was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the autobiography category. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)