Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Born in Ecuador and raised undocumented in New York City, author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio writes with candor and clarity about mental health, beauty, music, and the experiences of immigrants who live in this country without citizenship. A 2011 graduate of Harvard, her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker,Vogue and many other publications. Her first book, The Undocumented Americans (2020), a collection of essays that are part memoir, part reporting, has been greeted with enormous acclaim. A finalist for the National Book Award, The Undocumented Americans was listed among Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020 and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Yale University. Read her interview with NYT here.