Justin Torres (born 1980) is an American novelist and an Assistant Professor of English at

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

. He won the First Novelist Award for his semi-autobiographical novel ''We the Animals'' which was also a

Publishing Triangle The Publishing Triangle, founded in 1988 by Robin Hardy, is an American association of gay men and lesbians in the publishing industry. They sponsor an annual National Lesbian and Gay Book Month, and have sponsored the annual Triangle Awards pro ...

Award finalist and a

NAACP Image Award The NAACP Image Awards is an annual awards ceremony presented by the U.S.-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to honor outstanding performances in film, television, theatre, music, and literature. Similar to ...

nominee. ''

We the Animals ''We the Animals'' (2011) is the debut novel by the American author Justin Torres. It is a bildungsroman about three wild brothers of white and Puerto Rican parentage who live a rough and tumble childhood in rural upstate New York during the 1 ...

'' has been adapted into a film and awarded the Next Innovator Prize at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...

Early life

Justin Torres was born to a father of Puerto Rican descent and a mother of

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

and Irish descent. He was raised in Baldwinsville, New York as the youngest of three brothers. Although his novel ''We the Animals'' is not an autobiography, Torres has said that the "hard facts" in the novel mirror his own life. ''City of God'' by

Gil Cuadros Gil Cuadros (July 22, 1962 – August 29, 1996) was an American gay poet, essayist, and ceramist known for his writing on the impact of AIDS. Biography Cuadros grew up in Montebello, California with parents from Northern California. He d ...

, published in 1994, reportedly helped him to come out as gay. After leaving his family home, he attended

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, ...

on scholarship but quickly dropped out. After a few years of moving around in the country and taking whatever job came, a friend invited him to sit in a writing course taught at

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

which motivated him to start writing seriously.

Awards and honors

His first novel, ''

'' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), won an

Indies Choice Book Awards The Indies Choice Book Award (formerly known as Book Sense Book of the Year 2000-2008) is an American literary award that was inaugurated at BookExpo America 2000. The American Booksellers Association (ABA) rededicated the award (previously known ...

(Adult Debut Honor Award) and was also a

Award finalist and a

nominee (Outstanding Literary Work, Debut Author). Torres further won the 2012 First Novelist Award for ''

.'' Torres was named by Salon.com as one of the sexiest men of 2011. In 2012 the

National Book Foundation The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...

named him among their '' 5 under 35'' young fiction writers.

Career

In 2010, Torres received his master's degree from Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was a 2010-2012

Stegner Fellow The Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. The award is named after American Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), a historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and Stanford facult ...

at Stanford University. He was a recipient of the Rolón Fellowship in Literature from

United States Artists United States Artists (USA) is a national arts funding organization based in Chicago. USA is dedicated to supporting living artists and cultural practitioners across the United States by granting unrestricted awards. Mission The organization' ...

. In the summer of 2016, Torres was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

's Institute for American Studies in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, Germany. He was a former dog walker and a former employee of McNally Jackson, a bookstore in Manhattan. Torres is currently an Assistant Professor of English at

. He has published short fiction for
The New Yorker
', ''

Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and ma ...

'', '' Harper's'', ''

Tin House ''Tin House'' is an American book publisher based in Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Portland publisher Win McCormack originally conceived the idea for a literary magazine called ''Tin House'' in the summer of 1998. He enlisted Holly MacArt ...

'', '' Glimmer Train'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', and other publications, as well as non-fiction for '' The Advocate'' and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

''. A movie version of ''We The Animals'', directed by Jeremiah Zagar, premiered at the

in 2018, where it won the Next Innovator Prize.

References

External links

Justin Torres
– website
''Los Angeles Review of Books'' - Daniel Olivas interviews Justin Torres''Brooklyn Rail'' - In Conversation Justin Torres and Jenine Holmes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Torres, Justin 1980 births Living people 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American male writers American male novelists American LGBT novelists American gay writers Puerto Rican male writers Puerto Rican novelists The New Yorker people Stegner Fellows Gay novelists