Patricia Engel

About Patricia

Patricia Engel is a Colombian-American writer whose five books have established her as one of the most essential literary voices of her generation. She earned a BA in French and Art History from NYU's College of Arts & Science in 1999, later completing an MFA in fiction at Florida International University. The San Francisco Chronicle has called her "a unique and necessary voice for the Americas." Her debut story collection, Vida (2010), was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, named a New York Times Notable Book, and in 2017 won Colombia's national prize in literature, the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana — making Engel the first woman and Vida the first book in translation to receive the honor. Her debut novel, It's Not Love, It's Just Paris (2013), won the International Latino Book Award and earned praise from Edwidge Danticat and Roxane Gay. The Veins of the Ocean (2016) won the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was named a New York Times Editors' Choice. Her fourth book, Infinite Country (2021), was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Reese's Book Club pick, winner of the New American Voices award, and a Big Read selection by the National Endowment for the Arts. Her fifth book, The Faraway World (2023), was a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Editors' Choice. Engel has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction (2019), a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (2014), the O. Henry Award, the Boston Review Fiction Prize, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature (2023). Her work appears in The Sun, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, and Oprah Daily, among many others.