American · b. 1977
Cristina Henríquez is an American novelist and short story writer. She was born in 1977 in Delaware to a Panamanian father and an American mother, and her Panamanian heritage shapes much of her work. Her first book, the story collection Come Together, Fall Apart (2006), was followed by the novel The World in Half (2009). Her best-known novel, The Book of Unknown Americans (2014), follows families who have immigrated to the United States from Latin America and became a widely read and taught book. She also wrote the nonfiction work Sunrise. Her novel The Great Divide (2024) tells the story of the building of the Panama Canal through laborers, a doctor and a fisherman. She has been a Pushcart Prize recipient and has taught writing, and her stories and essays have appeared in many magazines and anthologies.