Kimberly Garza
Photo by Lindsay Garza
Bio
Kimberly Garza is the author of the novel The Last Karankawas (Henry Holt, 2022), which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an Indie Next pick. Her stories and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, LitHub, Texas Highways, Copper Nickel, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. She holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas, where she earned a PhD in 2019. A native Texan—born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde—she is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Thank you. What better way to start? I am honored and incredibly moved to receive this fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, a representative of not just the arts but American arts. As the daughter of an immigrant mother from the Philippines and a Mexican American father from the border, that word—American—holds so much weight. Like many Americans, my family and my characters included, I bear the beauty and the struggle of several cultures, identities, and loyalties each day; I pledge allegiance to places that sometimes do not pledge it back. Reading and writing were where I found power. Reading the words of others brave enough to emblazon their many faces and languages and versions of America into books showed me there was space in these pages too for my communities, for our overlooked and diverse corners of Texas and the U.S.
Receiving this fellowship is a gift. Not just for the funding, which will allow me the freedom of time and support to finish my second novel. Not just for the status, though adding this line to my bio will definitely make me cry, just as I did when I got the phone call from Jessica Flynn (right before I Googled her to make sure this wasn’t an elaborate prank). But because it feels like a hand outstretched in welcome, to my writing and to writers like me from this American institution celebrating our arts, that we belong here, too. And we do.