Claire Jiménez

Claire Jiménez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York.^[1] She is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories (2019) and the novel What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (2023),^[2] which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.^[3][4]

What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez was favorably reviewed by the Associated Press, USA Today,^[5] and Kirkus Reviews.^[6] Jiménez was also named a finalist for the International Latino Book Awards^[7] and won Best Latino Book of 2019 by NBC News.^[7]

Jiménez co-founded the Puerto Rican Literature Project in 2019.^[8] In 2019 her book Staten Island Stories won the Hornblower Award for a first book from the New York Society Library.^[9] She has an MFA from Vanderbilt University^[7] and in 2022 Jiménez earned a Ph.D. in English with a concentration in ethnic studies and digital humanities from University of Nebraska–Lincoln.^[9]

Jiménez is an assistant professor and McCausland Faculty Fellow at University of South Carolina.^[10]

Her essays have appeared in Afro-Hispanic Review and The Rumpus.^[8]

Awards

Year	Title	Award	Category	Result	Ref.
2019	Staten Island Stories	New York City Book Award	First Book	Won
2023	What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez	Booklist Editor's Choice	Adult Books	Selected
2024		Aspen Words Literary Prize	—	Longlisted
		PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction	—	Won

Biblio

• Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019)
• Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central, 2023)