Cristina Rivera Garza is celebrating a special prize…

The 59-year-old Mexican author and professor has won the Pulitzer Prize for memoir or autobiography for her acclaimed memoir, Liliana’s Invincible Summer.

The book is a genre-bending account of the author’s 20-year-old sister, who was murdered by a former boyfriend, It mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss.

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’s 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 the University of Houston.

Medar de la Cruz, a contributor for The New Yorker, won the Pulitzer for illustrated reporting and commentary for The Diary of a Rikers Island Library Worker in The New Yorker, which offers a rare glimpse of life inside the jail system through de la Cruz’ artistic eye.

He won the award for his visually-driven story set inside Rikers Island jail using bold black-and-white images that humanize the prisoners and staff through their hunger for books.

de la Cruz, a comics artist also who works in New York City jails as a library assistant for the Brooklyn Public Library, takes readers through snippets of his work serving detained New Yorkers and recognizing their humanity in an inhumane setting.

“Phones and cameras aren’t allowed on Rikers, but I’m an illustrator,” de la Cruz wrote in the piece. “Sometimes I saw things that I felt compelled to draw from memory later.”

Brandon Som won the Pulitzer for poetry for Tripas: Poems from Georgia Review Books.

It’s a A collection that deeply engages with the complexities of the poet’s dual Mexican and Chinese heritage, highlighting the dignity of his family’s working lives, creating community rather than conflict.

For a complete list of 2024 Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists, visit the awards website.