José Ángel Navejas to receive Pilsen Fest’s 2019 José Revueltas Award for Literature
José Ángel Navejas, PhD candidate in the Hispanic and Italian Studies Department at UIC, will be presented with Pilsen Fest’s 2019 José Revueltas Award for Literature. Named after the renowned Mexican writer and political activist, the José Revueltas Award is Pilsen Fest’s way of recognizing a local Chicago author whose work addresses the needs of the community and embodies its spirit. An outspoken critic of immigration policies of the United States, José Ángel is the author of Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant (2014). In 2019, Ilegal became the first book translated into Spanish by the University of Illinois Press in its one-hundred year history. José Ángel has also recently received the 2019-2020 IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellowship.
In addition to Illegal, José Ángel has edited Palabras migrantes: 10 ensayistas mexican@s de Chicago (2018). He is also the author of Invierno (2019) and Un mojado en Chicago y tres discursos inaugurales (forthcoming in 2020).