Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez emigrated from Trinidad after completing high school there. She received her MA and Ph.D. in English from New York University and is CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Medgar Evers College where she chairs the English Department.

Dr. Nunez is the award-winning author of six novels: Prospero's Daughter; Grace; Discretion; Bruised Hibiscus; Beyond the Limbo Silence; and When Rocks Dance. Prospero’s Daughter, her most recent novel, was a March 2006 Editor’s Choice in the New York Times. The Times calls Nunez “a master of pacing and plotting,” and says that Prospero’s Daughter is “gripping and richly imagined.” Prospero’s Daughter was named 2006 Best Novel of the Year by Black Issues Book Review and was the 2006 One Book, One Community selection for the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, celebrated at the 2006 Miami International Literary Festival. Bruised Hibiscus won a 2001 American Book Award, Discretion was short-listed for the 2003 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Beyond the Limbo Silence won the 1999 Independent Publishers Book Award in the multicultural category. In its review of Nunez’s novel Grace, Publisher’s Weekly says that the prose is “exquisitely tuned” and that the narrative unfolds with “understated elegance.” The Seattle Times comments that “ Discretion delivers two memorable characters whose personal culture clashes, both shared and internalized, are as telling as those of the world they inhabit.” Black Issues Book Review describes Bruised Hibiscus as “moving, powerful and haunting” and Booklist says of Beyond the Limbo Silence that Nunez has a writing style that “will remind many of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.” Beyond the Limbo Silence was also picked by the Washington Post as one of the best books of 1998.

Dr. Nunez is co-editor with Jennifer Sparrow of the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad and author of several monographs of literary criticism, with emphasis on Caribbean literature. She is a former fellow of Yaddo and MacDowell artist colonies. A cofounder of the National Black Writers Conference, and director from 1986-2000, Nunez received grant awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as grants from The Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Reed Foundation for these conferences. She is executive producer of the 2004 NY Emmy-nominated CUNY TV series Black Writers in America. Her audiobooks include Grace and Prospero's Daughter (BBC/America) and Discretion (Recorded Books).

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