Kirstin Valdez Quade


Kirstin Valdez Quade is an American writer. Her debut short story collection, Night at the Fiestas, received critical praise and won awards. A review in the New York Times labeled her stories "legitimate masterpieces" and called the book a "haunting and beautiful debut story collection."

Career

Quade's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Narrative Magazine, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her writing weaves together themes of family, race, class, and coming-of-age, and unfold in New Mexico landscapes inspired by the author's own upbringing.
She attended Phillips Exeter Academy and earned her BA from Stanford University and her MFA from the University of Oregon. From 2009 to 2011 she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, where she also taught as a Jones Lecturer. In 2014-15, she was the Delbanco Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Princeton University.

Awards and honors