Erika L. Sánchez is a Mexican-American poet, novelist, and essayist.

Her debut poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion, was a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award. Her debut young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a National Book Awards finalist, and Tomás Rivera Award winner. Time has recognized it as one of the best YA novels of all time. It is now is being made into a MGM Orion film directed by America Ferrera. She is an executive producer in the project.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter has also been adapted to the theater at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, Seattle Rep Theater, and Greenway Court Theater in Los Angeles. Also, her novel has been banned across the country for utterly illogical reasons.

Most recently, Sánchez published a critically acclaimed memoir-in-essays titled Crying in the Bathroom with Viking Books. It won the Chicago Review of Books Nonfiction award and has been optioned for television. Sánchez was a Fulbright Scholar, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent fellow from the Poetry Foundation, a Princeton Arts Fellow, a recipient of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation, and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry. Sánchez earned a BA from UIC and an MFA from the University of New Mexico. Her books have been translated and published in Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Brazil, France, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, and Italy. She’s appeared on WGN, PBS, NPR, Good Morning America, Telemundo, Univision, and MSNBC.

She lives in Chicago with her family.