Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez is a 3-Time AALBC.com Bestselling Author

Elizabeth Nunez, PhD, immigrated to the US from Trinidad after completing high school there. She is the award-winning author of a memoir and ten novels, four of them selected as New York Times Editors Choice. Her two most recent books are Not for Everyday Use, a memoir, and Even in Paradise, a novel. Not for Everyday Use won the 2015 prestigious Hurston Wright Legacy Award for nonfiction and is an Oprah online book club selection. Her latest novel Even in Paradise, a contemporary version of Shakespeare’s King Lear, is an O, the Oprah Magazine and Essence selection. In its starred review of Even in Paradise, Kirkus described the novel as “A dazzling epic triumph.” Nunez’s other novels are: Boundaries, nominated for the 2012 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Fiction; Anna In-Between which won the PEN Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and was long-listed for an IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award; Prospero’s Daughter which was 2006 Novel of the Year for Black Issues Book Review and for Mosaic Magazine. It was also the 2010 Trinidad and Tobago One Book, One Community selection, and the 2006 Florida Center for the Literary Arts One Book, One Community selection. Bruised Hibiscus won an American Book Award, and Beyond `the Limbo Silence won the Independent Publishers Book Award. Her other novels include Grace; Discretion, which was short-listed for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and When Rocks Dance. Most of Nunez’s novels have also been published as audio books, and two are in translation, in Spanish and German.

Nunez has also written several monographs of literary criticism, which have been published in scholarly journals. She is co-editor with Jennifer Sparrow of the anthology Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad. Nunez’s novels are taught in colleges and universities across the US. Nunez is the co-founder with John Oliver Killens of the National Black Writers Conference and was director for fourteen years. She raised funds for the conference with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Reed Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation as well as from private donors. In 1994, the New York Times recognized the importance of the conference with a long article in its Arts section. Nunez is executive producer of the NY Emmy-nominated CUNY-TV series Black Writers in America, narrated by Ossie Davis, which was aired on PBS stations across the country. Nunez has served on the jury for national and international literary prizes/awards, including the international Dublin IMPAC Literary prize, the National Endowment for the Humanities Award; the Ernest Gaines Literary prize and the Fulbright Award for Creative Writing. She continues to give readings of her work in the US and in the Caribbean. Nunez received her PhD in English Literature from New York University. She was the former Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York, and is currently a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, the City University of New York. She will join the faculty at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Summer 2021 and 2022. The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) has named a prize in Nunez’s name for Caribbean writers at home and in the diaspora. Nunez’s latest novel Now Lila Knows will be published in spring 2022.

You may reach Elizabeth Nunez at this email address: Elizabeth.nunez@hunter.cuny.edu