49 Hispanic and Latino American novelists

Oscar "Zeta" Acosta Fierro was a Mexican-American attorney, politician, novelist and activist in the Chicano Movement. He was most well known for his novels Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973), and for his friendship with American author Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson characterized him as a heavyweight Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Acosta disappeared in 1974 during a trip in Mexico and is presumed dead.

Daniel Alarcón is a novelist, journalist and radio producer. He is co-founder, host and executive producer of Radio Ambulante, an award-winning Spanish language podcast distributed by NPR. Currently, he is an assistant professor of broadcast journalism at the Columbia University Journalism School and writes about Latin America for The New Yorker.

Kathleen Alcalá is the author of a short-story collection, three novels set in the American Southwest and nineteenth-century Mexico, and a collection of essays. She teaches creative writing at workshops and programs in Washington state and elsewhere, including Seattle University, the University of New Mexico and Richard Hugo House.

Malin Alegria is an American author of Youth literature, who primarily focuses on the genre of young adult novels.

Isabel Angélica Allende Llona is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the genre magical realism, is known for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts, which have been commercially highly successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Rudolfo Anaya was an American author. Noted for his 1972 novel Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya was considered one of the founders of the canon of contemporary Chicano literature. The themes and cultural references of the novel, which were uncommon at the time of its publication, had a lasting impression on fellow Latino writers. It was subsequently adapted into a film and an opera.

Marie Arana is an author, editor, journalist, critic, and Literary Director of the Library of Congress.

Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams (1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).

Norma Elia Cantú is a Chicana postmodernist writer and the Murchison Professor in the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Elena Castedo or Elena Castedo-Ellerman is an American and Spanish author and educator who writes in both Spanish and English. Her novel Paradise (1990) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Her subsequent self-translation of the work into Spanish, as El paraíso (1990), was named by El Mercurio as the Chilean Book of the Year, was a best-seller for five months in Spain, and was nominated for the Miguel de Cervantes Prize. Her short stories Troopers (1986) and The White Bedspread (1991) each won a Phoebe Prize from George Mason University. Bedspread also was selected as the winner of the PEN International short story contest.

Ana Castillo is a Mexican-American novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Considered one of the leading voices in Chicana experience, Castillo is known for her experimental style as a Latina novelist. Her works offer pungent and passionate socio-political comment that is based on established oral and literary traditions. Castillo's interest in race and gender issues can be traced throughout her writing career. Her novel Sapogonia was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is the editor of La Tolteca, an arts and literary magazine. Castillo held the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University. She has attained a number of awards including an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters, a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry and in 1998 Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago.

Daniel Chacón is a Latino short story writer, novelist, essayist, editor, professor and radio host.

Angelico Chavez, O.F.M., was an Hispanic American Friar Minor, priest, historian, author, poet and painter. "Angelico" was his pen name; he also dropped the accent marks from this name.

Daína Chaviano is a Cuban-American writer of French and Asturian descent living in the United States since 1991.

Sandra Cisneros is a Chicana writer. She is best known for her first novel The House on Mango Street (1983) and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros herself attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, was awarded one of 25 new Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowships in 2017, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.

Angie Cruz is an American novelist. She is a 2020 recipient of the Alex Awards.

Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience.

Paula Fox was an American author of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books. She also won several awards for particular children's books including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer; a 1983 National Book Award in category Children's Fiction (paperback) for A Place Apart; and the 2008 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for A Portrait of Ivan (1969) in its German-language edition Ein Bild von Ivan.

Cristina García is a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. Her first novel Dreaming in Cuban (1992) was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has since published her novels The Agüero Sisters (1997) and Monkey Hunting (2003), and has edited books of Cuban and other Latin American literature. A Handbook to Luck (2007) follows three children from Cuba, over twenty-six years through sacrifices and forced exiles.

Dagoberto Gilb is an American writer who writes extensively about the American Southwest.

Reyna Grande is a Mexican author living in the United States.

Gilberto Hernández, usually credited as Gilbert Hernandez and also by the nickname Beto, is an American cartoonist. He is best known for his Palomar/Heartbreak Soup stories in Love and Rockets, an alternative comic book he shared with his brothers Jaime and Mario.

Oscar Jerome Hijuelos was an American novelist.

Rolando Hinojosa is an American novelist, essayist, poet and the Ellen Clayton Garwood professor in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

Juliette "Juju" Castaneda, also known by her nickname Juju C. or by her pen name Juliet C., is an American media personality, author, actress and businesswoman. She rose to prominence as a main cast member of the VH1 reality television series Love & Hip Hop: New York and she subsequently appeared as a supporting cast member on its spin-off show, Love & Hip Hop: Miami. Castaneda released her debut novel, Secrets of a Jewel, in January 2017.

Jorge Majfud is a Uruguayan American writer.

Jaime Manrique is a bilingual Colombian American novelist, poet, essayist, educator, and translator.

Pam Muñoz Ryan is an American writer for children and young adults, particularly in the multicultural genre.

Daniel José Older is an American fantasy and young adult fiction writer.

Judith Ortiz Cofer was a Puerto Rican American author. Her critically acclaimed and award-winning work spans a range of literary genres including poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction. Ortiz Cofer was the Emeritus Regents' and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, where she taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops for 26 years. In 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2013, she won the University's 2014 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award.

Cecile Pineda, is an American author. Her novels have won numerous awards including the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and a Gold Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California in 1986 for Face, and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.

Camilo Pino La Corte is a Venezuelan novelist. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1970, the son of historian Elias Pino Iturrieta. He is the author of Crema Paraíso, Mandrágora and Valle Zamuro,.

Tomás Rivera was a Chicano author, poet, and educator. He was born in Texas to migrant farm workers, and worked in the fields as a young boy. However, he achieved social mobility through education—earning a degree at Southwest Texas State University, and later a Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD) at the University of Oklahoma—and came to believe strongly in the virtues of education for Mexican-Americans.

Luis Javier Rodriguez is a poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist. He was the 2014 Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Rodriguez is recognized as a major figure in contemporary Chicano literature. He identified himself as a native Xicanx writer in his most recent book. His best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, among others. It has been the subject of controversy when it was included in school reading lists in California, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas, due to its frank depictions of gang life.

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton was the first female Mexican-American author to write in English. In her career she published two books: Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) and The Squatter and the Don (1885); and one play: Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts: Taken From Cervantes' Novel of That Name (1876).

Benjamin Alire Sáenz is an American poet, novelist and writer of children's books.

Alex Sánchez is a Mexican American author of award-winning novels for teens and adults. His first novel, Rainbow Boys (2001), was selected by the American Library Association (ALA), as a Best Book for Young Adults. Subsequent books have won additional awards, including the Lambda Literary Award. Although Sanchez's novels are widely accepted in thousands of school and public libraries in America, they have faced a handful of challenges and efforts to ban them. In Webster, New York, removal of Rainbow Boys from the 2006 summer reading list was met by a counter-protest from students, parents, librarians, and community members resulting in the book being placed on the 2007 summer reading list.

Michele Marie Serros was an American author, poet and comedic social commentator. Hailed as "a Woman to Watch in the New Century" by Newsweek, She wrote several books and regularly contributed original commentaries to National Public Radio.

Leslie Marmon Silko is an American writer. A Laguna Pueblo Indian woman, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.

Brando Skyhorse is an American author. He won the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2011 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction for his novel The Madonnas of Echo Park.

Sergio Troncoso is an American author of short stories, essays and novels. He often writes about the United States-Mexico border, immigration, philosophy in literature, families and fatherhood, and crossing cultural, religious, and psychological borders.

Luis Alberto Urrea is a Mexican American poet, novelist, and essayist.

Alisa Valdes is an American author, journalist, and film producer, known for her bestselling novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club.

Edgardo Vega Yunqué was a Puerto Rican novelist and short story writer, who also used the Americanized pen name Ed Vega.

José Antonio Villarreal was a Chicano novelist.

Victor Villaseñor is an American writer, best known for the national bestselling book Rain of Gold. Villaseñor's works are often taught in American schools. He went on to write Thirteen Senses: A Memoir (2001), a continuation of Rain of Gold. His book Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004) describes his life. The author has received awards and endorsements, including an appointment to serve as the founding Steinbeck Chair at Hartnell College and the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, from February 2003 to March 2004.

Helena Maria Viramontes is an American fiction writer and professor of English.

Kristen Millares Young is a Cuban-American investigative journalist, essayist, and novelist. Subduction, her first novel, was released in 2020.

Gwendolyn Zepeda is an American author. Zepeda is Houston's first Poet Laureate, serving a two-year term from 2013 to 2015. She was succeeded by Leslie Contreras Schwartz.