Manuel Muñoz (writer)

Manuel Muñoz is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.

Biography

Muñoz was born in Dinuba, California, a small city in the Central Valley of California, to a family of Mexican-American farm workers. Despite his family's economic woes – and his occasionally having to lend a hand during the grape harvest – Muñoz performed very well in school. He graduated from Harvard University in 1994, and went on to earn a Masters in Fine Arts from Cornell University in 1998 He met Helena María Viramontes, who has had an important influence on his work, at Cornell. Muñoz considers her to be "his literary godmother."

He moved to New York City in 2001, where he lived until 2008 when he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.

Writing career

Muñoz's early writing appeared in various publications, notably Rush Hour, Swink, Epoch, Glimmer Train, Edinburgh Review, and Boston Review. His first collection of short stories, Zigzagger, was published in 2003. Most of the stories in this first tome are set in the rural towns of the Central Valley of California, which resemble his hometown of Dinuba. Muñoz has noted that the Central Valley has functioned as "reservoir of creativity" for him. David Ebershoff in a review for the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Muñoz has created a wholly authentic vision of contemporary California— one that has little to do with coastlines, cities or silicon.