Norma Elia Cantú

Norma Elia Cantú earned her AA from Laredo Junior College, her BS in English and political science from Texas A&M International University (TAMIU), her MS from Texas A&M University—Kingsville, and her PhD in English from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. 

Cantú is the author of the poetry collection Border Meditation/Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Life, Love and Work (University of Arizona Press, 2019). She has served as the editor, coeditor, and translator of numerous anthologies, as well as works of poetry, prose, and drama. Her recent publications include meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction (University of Texas Press, 2020), coedited with Aída Hurtado; Teaching Gloria Anzaldúa: Pedagogies and Practices for Our Classrooms and Communities (University of Arizona Press, 2020), coedited with Candace de León Zepeda and Margaret Cantú-Sánchez; and the novel, Cabañuelas (University of New Mexico Press, 2019). In 2015, Cantú published a Spanish translation of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera for the Universidad Autónoma de México and penned the introduction for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the text, published in 2012 by Aunt Lute Books. Also in 2015, Cantú rereleased her fictionalized memoir Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (University of New Mexico Press, 1995), a winner of the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize.

Cantú has received numerous other awards for her scholarship, writing, and editorial work, including Fulbright and Ford Foundation fellowships, the 2003 Américo Paredes Prize and the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award, both from the American Folklore Society, the 2017 Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the 2022 Tejano Heritage Award from Texas A&M University—Kingsville, and the 2022 Lifetime Achievement in Literary Arts Recognition awarded by Gemini Ink Literary at Inkstravaganza. In 2023, she was inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame.

Cantú recently served as the president of the American Folklore Society (2020–22). She has taught at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Texas A&M International University, Georgetown University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she was a professor emerita, and the University of Missouri—Kansas City. She is currently the Norene R. and T. Frank Murchison Endowed Professor in Humanities at Trinity University.