Author Bio

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Reyna Grande is the author of the bestselling memoirs, The Distance Between Us (Atria, 2012) and A Dream Called Home (Atria, 2018), where she writes about her life before and after she arrived in the United States from Mexico as an undocumented child immigrant. 

Her other works include the novels, Across a Hundred Mountains (Atria, 2006), Dancing with Butterflies (Washington Square Press, 2009), and  A Ballad of Love and Glory (Atria, 2022), a novel set during the Mexican-American War.  The Distance Between Us is also available as a young reader’s edition from Simon & Schuster’s Children’s Division, Aladdin. She is the co-editor of an anthology by and about undocumented Americans called Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival and New Beginnings (HarperVia, 2022). Her books have been adopted as the common read selection by schools, colleges, and cities across the country. 

Reyna has received an American Book Award, the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award, and the International Latino Book Award. She was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards. She was honored with a Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature, a Latino Spirit Award, and a Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers. The young reader’s version of The Distance Between Us received an International Literacy Association Children’s Book Award.

Writing about immigration, family separation, language trauma, the price of the American Dream, and her writing journey, Reyna’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, CNN, The Lily at The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, among others. In March 2020, she was a guest on Oprah’s Book Club television special. 

Reyna is a proud member of the Macondo Writer’s Workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros, where she has also served as faculty. She has also taught at Bread Loaf Writers Conference, VONA (Voices of Our Nation’s Arts), Under the Volcano Writer’s Conference, and Grubstreet’s The Muse and the Marketplace, among others. 

Born in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, Reyna was two years old when her father left for the U.S. to find work. Her mother followed her father north two years later, leaving Reyna and her siblings behind in Mexico. In 1985, when Reyna was nine, she left Iguala to make her own journey north.

Reyna attended Pasadena City College before transferring to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she went on to become the first in her family to graduate from university. She holds a BA and an MFA in creative writing. 

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