Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Associate Professor & Margaret Shuping Scholar of Creative Nonfiction

2012, MFA-Creative Nonfiction, University of Iowa
1997, BA-Journalism, University of Texas at Austin
1997, BA-Post-Soviet Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Bio

Stephanie Elizondo Griest is the author of four books of creative nonfiction: the travel memoirs Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines; All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands; and the guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go. She also edited Best Women’s Travel Writing in 2010. Winner of a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting, she has lectured around the globe, in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a literary ambassador for the U.S. State Department.

To read more, visit my website

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Publications:

BOOKS

• All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands (UNC Press, 2017)
• Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines (Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster, 2008)
• Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (Villard/Random House, 2004)
• 100 Places Every Woman Should Go (Travelers’ Tales, 2007)
• Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010 (Editor) (Travelers’ Tales, 2010)

RECENT ESSAYS

• Does ‘Authentic’ Mexican Food Exist? (BBC Travel, 2021)
• Power Moves: Baile Folklorico Dancers of Mexico (Travel + Leisure, 2020)
• Thy Kingdom Come (2019 Meridel Le Sueur Essay, Water~Stone Review)
• The Saga Continues: How Iceland Became The World’s Most Literary Society (AirBnB Magazine, 2018)
• Chiefing in Cherokee (VQR, 2017 and Best American Travel Writing, 2018)
• Spirit Animal (Orion, 2017)
• The Disciplined Utopia (The Believer, August 2017)
• Art Against The Wall (Oxford American, Spring 2015)

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Awards

• Writer-in-Residence, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, NM 2021
• Artist-in-Residence, Marble House Project, Dorset, VT 2019
• Writer-in-Residence, Lannan Foundation, Marfa, TX 2019
• University Research Council Grant, UNC Chapel Hill, 2017
• Faculty Fellow, Institute for the Arts & Humanities, UNC Chapel Hill, 2015
• Inductee, Texas Institute of Letters, 2013
• Winner, PEN Southwest Book Award for Nonfiction, 2009
• Winner, Best Travel Book, International Latino Book Awards, 2008
• Winner, Richard J. Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting, 2007
• Winner, Best Travel Book, Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, 2007
• Hodder Fellow, Princeton University, 2005-2006
• Luce Scholar, Henry Luce Foundation, 1997-1998
• USA Today All-Academic First Team, 1996

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Courses Taught:

• Intro to Creative Nonfiction
• Advanced Creative Nonfiction
• Honors Creative Nonfiction
• Travel Writing
• Memoir Writing
• Memoir as Witness
• Experiential Writing

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume