Photo by Dominique Muñoz, 2023

Kali Fajardo-Anstine is the nationally bestselling author of the novel Woman of Light (Random House, 2022), winner of the Reading the West Award in Fiction, the Women Writing the West Willa Award in Historical Fiction, and nominated for the Colorado Book Award, the Carol Shields Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.

Fajardo-Anstine’s first book is the widely acclaimed short story collection Sabrina & Corina (Random House, 2019), a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, the Story Prize, the Saroyan International Prize, and winner of a American Book Award and a Reading the West Award in Fiction.

In 2023, Fajardo-Anstine’s introduction to Willa Cather’s beloved classic Death Comes for the Archbishop was published by Penguin Classics.

Fajardo-Anstine’s honors include awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Denver Mayor’s office. She is the 2022 - 2024 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University. Fajardo-Anstine has received fellowships from Yaddo (2017, 2021), MacDowell (2018, 2021), Hedgebrook, and Tin House. Her writing has appeared in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, O the Oprah Magazine, The American Scholar, Boston Review, and elsewhere. Translated into numerous languages, her work has been published in Japanese, Italian, German, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish.

Fajardo-Anstine is also a well-regarded speaker and has delivered lectures and keynotes across the country for institutions such as Princeton University, the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, Tulane University, Mississippi State University, PEN America, and elsewhere. In 2024, she gave the commencement address for Fort Lewis College and the invited lecture for the 69th Annual Willa Cather Spring Conference. Her books have been included in many One Book One Community reading programs.

Born in Denver, Colorado, she is the second eldest of seven siblings. Fajardo-Anstine dropped out of high school weeks into her senior year, earning her GED and going on to graduate with a BA in English and Minor in Chicana/o Studies from Metropolitan State University of Denver. She holds an MFA from the University of Wyoming and worked for over a decade as an independent bookseller at West Side Books in North Denver.