Elaine Castillo (born 1984) is a Filipino-American writer. She was born and raised in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

and attended

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. In 2009, Castillo moved to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and later received a MA in Creative & Life Writing from

Goldsmiths, University of London Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...

. She was a three-time recipient of the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for prose while at UC Berkeley, and she has also been nominated for the Pat Kavanagh Award, a

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...

, and a Gatewood Prize. Her first novel, ''America Is Not the Heart'', was published in 2018 and received widespread acclaim. Ligaya Mishan, writing for the ''

New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'', describes the novel as "hungrily ambitious in sweep and documentary in detail, and reads like a seismograph of the aftershocks from trading one life for another". Maris Kreizman, wrote in

Vulture A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. There are 23 extant species of vulture (including Condors). Old World vultures include 16 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to North and ...

that "the writing in ''America Is Not the Heart'' is tremendous, the descriptions evocative, and the characters will stay with you". Parts of the book take place in Milpitas, California, where Castillo grew up. The title of the novel is a reference to Carlos Bulosan's novel '' America Is in the Heart''. Castillo is openly bisexual and has said it was important for her to write about bisexual women in her novel because of how rarely they are depicted. She is also of Filipino descent.

Works

* ''America Is Not the Heart''. Viking, 2018. Novel. * ''How to Read Now: Essays''. 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Castillo, Elaine 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American women writers 1984 births Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London American bisexual writers American expatriates in the United Kingdom American LGBT novelists American novelists of Asian descent American women novelists American writers of Filipino descent Bisexual women writers Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni