Lorraine M. López is an associate professor of English teaching in the master of fine arts in creative writing program at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of six books of fiction and editor or coeditor of two essay collections.

Her short story collection, “Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories,” won the inaugural Miguel Marmól prize for fiction. Her second book, “Call Me Henri,” was awarded the Paterson Prize for Young Adult Literature in 2007, and her novels “The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters” and “The Realm of Hungry Spirits” were Borders/Las Comadres Selections. López’s short story collection, “Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories” was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize in Fiction in 2010 and winner of the Texas League of Writers Award for Outstanding Book of Fiction.

She has also edited or coedited three collections of essays: “An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor or Working-Class Roots”, “The Other Latin@: Writing against a Singular Identity” and “Rituals of Movement in the Writing of Judith Ortiz Cofer.”

López and professor William Luis, associate director of the latino and latina studies program at Vanderbilt University, co-founded “The Afro-Hispanic Review.” She also is an associate editor for the publication.

López lives in Nashville, Tenn., where she is at work on a linked-story collection titled “Postcards from the Gerund State and Other Stories” and a novel, “What We Have Here.”