Brief Bio
Jamie Figueroa writes toward memory and inherited silence from the thresholds—between languages, identities, and homelands. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult, 2021) and Mother Island: A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico (Pantheon, 2024), a memoir-in-essays praised for its lyricism, boldness, and decolonial gaze. Her work appears in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Elle, and American Short Fiction, among others. A recipient of the Truman Capote Award and a Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar, she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio, she lives in northern New Mexico, where land and language are in constant conversation.
Extended Bio
Jamie Figueroa is a critically acclaimed writer whose work interrogates lineage, colonial legacy, and the poetics of place. A passionate storyteller drawn to the sacred, the broken, and the luminous, she believes in the power of story to reclaim, reimagine, and heal—and is most alive when helping others uncover the language of their own truths. With deep roots in her Boricua/Puerto Rican (Afro-Taíno) heritage and a life lived in northern New Mexico, she explores themes of lineage, memory, and cultural reclamation through her writing.
She is the author of the novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult, 2021), praised by The New York Times Book Review as “a beautifully crafted, poetic book,” and by Publishers Weekly as “brimming with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full-hearted characters that nearly jump off the page.” The novel was an Indie Next Pick, longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, shortlisted for the Reading the West Debut Fiction Award, and selected as a Good Morning America Book Club Must-Read. It was also named one of the most anticipated debuts by Electric Literature, The Millions, Bustle, and The Rumpus.
Her genre-defying memoir-in-essays, Mother Island: A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico (Pantheon, 2024), continues her exploration of ancestral memory and cultural reclamation. The book received a starred review from Kirkus and was named one of the Los Angeles Times’ “6 Books to Shake Off Colonialism and Rethink Our Latino Stories.” It has been recognized as one of the most anticipated and essential nonfiction books of 2024 by Ms. Magazine, Elle, SheReads, Lupita Reads, Hispanic Executive, and Latinx Publishing.
Figueroa’s essays and fiction have appeared widely, including in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Elle, American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Agni, The Boston Review, and Kweli Journal, among others. She wrote her first poem at six, published her first poem as a teenager, and committed fully to a life centered around her writing practice in 1998. A devoted teacher of craft and creative courage, she is on faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Creative Writing program and has taught in public schools, colleges, community spaces, and universities nationwide since 2010.
A Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) alum and faculty member, she has received a Truman Capote Award and was named a Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar. Figueroa also served on the Carol Shields Prize Authors Committee, helping shape one of the most significant literary prizes for women and nonbinary writers of North America for the initial four cycles of the prize.
Figueroa is currently in her third year of doctoral studies in Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership at Southwestern College, where the heart of her research is on Creative Sovereignty through the lens of a Cuentista/Curandera. Her work poses a profound question to writers at all stages of their journey: “When you sit down at your desk to write, who owns you?” This inquiry resonates deeply within Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, as well as LGBTQI2S+ writers, reflecting the complex, layered realities and living histories that shape and sustain a lifelong creative practice.