Sergio Troncoso is the author of Nobody's Pilgrims, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, The Nature of Truth and From This Wicked Patch of Dust; and as editor, Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds and Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence.
He often writes about the United States-Mexico border, working-class immigrants, families and fatherhood, crossing cultural, psychological, and philosophical borders, and the border beyond the border.
Troncoso teaches at the Yale Writers’ Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut. A past president of the Texas Institute of Letters, he has also served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. His work has appeared in Pleiades, Texas Highways, CNN Opinion, Houston Chronicle, Other Voices, New Letters, Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Texas Monthly.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso was born and grew up on the east side of El Paso, Texas in rural Ysleta. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received two graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy from Yale University.
A Fulbright scholar, Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame, Texas Institute of Letters, and Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He was named a Fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters, the first Mexican American writer to receive this distinction.
Among the numerous literary awards Troncoso has won are the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story, Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, Gold Medal for Best Novel-Adventure or Drama from International Latino Book Awards, Bronze Award for Anthologies from Independent Publisher Book Awards, Gold Medal for Best Collection of Short Stories from International Latino Book Awards, Southwest Book Award, Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews, and the Silver Award for Multicultural Adult Fiction from ForeWord Reviews.
The El Paso City Council voted unanimously to rename the public library branch in Ysleta as the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library.
His literary papers are archived at The Wittliff Collections in San Marcos, Texas.
Nobody's Pilgrims
"Eloquent, bold, and terrifying."
-Elizabeth Crook, author of The Which Way Tree
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Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds:
"A deeply meaningful collection that navigates important nuances of identity."
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son:
“It's his most powerful work yet, and an essential addition to the Latinx canon."
-The Texas Observer
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From This Wicked Patch of Dust:
“Troncoso’s novel is an engaging literary achievement.”
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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Crossing Borders: Personal Essays:
“We owe it to ourselves to read, savor and read them again.”
-The El Paso Times
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The Nature of Truth:
“Impressively lucid.”
-The Chicago Tribune
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The Last Tortilla and Other Stories:
“Enthusiastically recommended.”
-Booklist
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Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence
“An eye-opening collection of essays.”
-Publishers Weekly






