Urrea to receive Paul Engle prize

Luis Alberto Urrea has been named the third recipient of the Paul Engle Prize by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization.

The prize, established in 2011, honors an individual who, like Paul Engle, represents a pioneering spirit in the world of literature through writing, editing, publishing, or teaching, and whose active participation in the larger issues of the day has contributed to the betterment of the world through the literary arts.

Urrea will receive the prize, which includes a one-of-a-kind work of art and $10,000, at 1 p.m. Oct. 4 during a special ceremony as part of the Iowa City Book Festival in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber on the University of Iowa campus. The event is free.

Urrea also will appear throughout the Corridor during a visit to the area Oct. 2 to 4. He will visit West Liberty High School; read at New Bo Books in Cedar Rapids at 5:30 p.m. Oct., 3; meet with high school and college students in Iowa City; and will participate on a free panel about immigration at 7 p.m. Oct. 2, at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts.

Urrea said the award comes as he wrestles with the idea of purpose in his work and how he should focus his intentions.

'Maintaining the work of witness in the face of ever shifting career developments and demands is a daunting task,” he says. 'The concept of a literature of witness - of bearing witness - has embedded in it the need for action. One must not simply hide in the shadows and type; one must also stand in the light. This award renews my commitment and vision; validation of this sort is so energizing and will impact my work for some time.”

Urrea, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for non-fiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is an acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph.

Born in Tijuana, Mexico, to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea is a best-selling author of 13 books. He has won numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays. 'The Devil's Highway,” his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize.

Urrea's novels include 'The Hummingbird's Daughter,” its follow-up, 'Queen of America,” and the best-selling 'Into the Beautiful North,” which imagines a small town in Mexico where all the men have immigrated to the United States. A group of young women decides to follow the men north and persuade them to return to their beloved village.

Urrea graduated from the University of California at San Diego and did his graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

After serving as a relief worker in Tijuana and film extra and columnist-editor-cartoonist, Urrea moved to Boston where he taught expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard. He has taught at Massachusetts Bay Community College and the University of Colorado, and he was the writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.

Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, Ill., where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.