A Conversation with Cynthia Cruz

Experience the Episode

Presented by Institute for Latino Studies

Born to a father whose education was severed at grammar school for field labor, Cynthia Cruz transformed feelings of shame into a determination that earned her a Ph.D. in philosophy and fueled the publication of nine poetry collections and a novella. Listen in to a conversation between Cruz and Notre Dame M.F.A. student Adriana Toledano Kolteniuk about how Cruz’s dismantling of the myth of the “late start” became a hallmark of her prolific ascent, offering a roadmap for redefining your own intellectual horizons.

Cynthia Cruz is a visiting assistant professor in Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program for the 2025-2026 academic year, and will be returning for the 2026-2027 academic year as well.

For more information on Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, please visit the Letras Latinas website.

Meet the Poet: Cynthia Cruz

Cynthia Cruz is a poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer. She is the author of the poetry collections Sweet Repetition (University of Chicago Press, 2025); Back to the Woods (Four Way Books, 2023); Hotel Oblivion (Four Way Books, 2022), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and the winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award; Guidebooks for the Dead (Four Way Books, 2020); Dregs (Four Way Books, 2018); How the End Begins (Four Way Books, 2016); Wunderkammer (Four Way Books, 2014); The Glimmering Room (Four Way Books, 2012); and Ruin (Alice James, 2006). Her debut novel was Steady Diet of Nothing (Four Way Books, 2023).

Cruz is also the author of The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class (Repeater Books, 2021) and Disquieting: Essays on Silence (Book*hug, 2019). She is the editor of the anthology Other Musics: New Latina Poetry (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019). 

Her poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including the NewYorker, Kenyon Review, the Paris Review, BOMB, the American Poetry Review, and the Boston Review. Her essays, interviews, and book and art reviews have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, and Guernica.

Born in Wiesbaden, Germany, Cruz grew up in northern California, where she earned a BA at Mills College. Cruz earned an MFA in creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA in art writing at the School of Visual Arts, and an MA in German language and literature at Rutgers University.

Cruz has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst MFA writing program, and Columbia University’s MFA writing program. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, as well as a Hodder fellowship from Princeton University.

Meet the Poet: Adriana Toledano Kolteniuk

Adriana Toledano Kolteniuk is a writer from Mexico City who spent her formative years in the US and has been a bilingual, bi-cultural bridge-builder since. She obtained her degree in English Literature from UNAM and then spent 8 years in Chiapas, where she (re)discovered her passion for wild nature, community building, and social justice. She considers herself an ecofeminist thinker who creates verbal-affective ecosystems from a queer, neurodivergent, anti-colonial lens. Adriana is a recipient of the Fulbright-García Robles Grant for Mexican citizens to pursue postgraduate studies in the US.

A Look Back: A 2016 Conversation with Cynthia Cruz

Cynthia Cruz came to Notre Dame’s campus in November 2016 for a reading sponsored by the Creative Writing Program. She was interviewed for the Letras Latinas oral history archive by Zachary Anderson ’17 M.F.A.