Cecilia Villarruel
Nonfiction
Chicago, IL
Cecilia Villarruel is a first-generation American from Chicago’s southside. Her parents are from Mexico, and she grew up working in the masa and tamale store they started in the 1980s and still run to this day. She has been a bilingual literacy coach at Chicago Public Schools, an ELL tutor to newly arrived immigrants and refugees, a teacher to unaccompanied minors in detention, and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is a recipient of the Vicente Fernandez Award for Latino Artists, the City of Chicago Individual Artist Program Grant, and has been awarded writing fellowships at Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center, and Bread Loaf. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published in Raleigh Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Another Chicago Magazine, Under the Gum Tree, Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, and others. She has a PhD in the Program for Writers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Indiana University Northwest in Gary.