Angela Morales, an instructor in composition and creative writing at Glendale Community College in California, was recently awarded the 2017 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay from PEN America. She was honored and received a $10,000 prize at a ceremony at the New School in New York City.
Morales was honored for her book The Girls in My Town (University of New Mexico Press, 2016), a series of essays about a Mexican American family in Los Angeles. A judge on the prize committee noted that “the elegantly structured essays in The Girls in My Town illuminate the politics of everyday life with quiet wit and real humanity. Angela Morales writes with nuance, humility, and bold feminism.”
Morales is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where she majored in English. She holds a master of fine arts degree from the Iowa Writers Workshop.