Erika L. Sánchez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her debut poetry collection, "Lessons on Expulsion," was published by Graywolf in July 2017, and was a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award. Her debut young adult novel, "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter," published in October 2017 by Knopf Books for Young Readers, was a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Awards finalist, and Tomás Rivera Award winner. Time has recognized it as one of the best YA novels of all time. It is now is being made into a film directed by America Ferrera. "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter" has also been adapted to the theater at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and Seattle Rep Theater.

Most recently Sánchez published a critically acclaimed memoir-in-essays titled "Crying in the Bathroom" with Viking Books. It won the Chicago Review of Books Nonfiction award in 2022. Sánchez was a Fulbright Scholar, a 2015 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent fellow from the Poetry Foundation, a 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellow, a 2018 recipient of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation, and a 2019 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She lives in Chicago with her family.

Hispanic Heritage, Immigration, Literary Poetry, Novelists, Mexican, Authors, Feminism, Hispanic Heritage Month, Women,