Daisy Hernández Reading

The Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series presents nonfiction writer Daisy Hernández reading from her most recent book, Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth (Hogarth Press, 2026). 

Presented by the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English, this in-person event is free and open to the public. ASL provided. For further questions about accessibility services and the venue, please email [email protected] or call 612-626-1528. 

Hernández is also the author of The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease (Tin House, 2021), which won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was selected as an inaugural title for the National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature Program. The book was named a top 10 nonfiction book of 2021 by Time Magazine and was a finalist for the New American Voices Award. She has spoken about the subject of her book—neglected disease and racial disparities in healthcare—on MSNBC and also with the Carter Center and the Pan American Health Organization.

Her memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed (Beacon Press, 2014) won the IPPY Award for best coming-of-age memoir and Lambda Literary’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award. The memoir was also a Publishing Triangle Award finalist.

Daisy co-edited the classic feminist anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (Seal Press), which has become a widely taught text in women’s and gender studies courses. Her work has been reprinted in several anthologies including the Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, and her essays and fiction have appeared in numerous publications including Aster(ix), Bellingham Review, Brevity, Dogwood, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, Iowa Review, and Rumpus, among others. She is a contributor to the Buddhist magazine Tricycle.

A journalist, she has reported for National Geographic, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Slate, and her writing has been aired on NPR's All Things Considered. Her magazine feature on transgender issues in communities of color was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.