Cynthia Pelayo
Fiction
Chicago, IL
Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award–winning and International Latino Book Award–winning author and poet, and the first Latina in history to win a Bram Stoker Award. Her work blends fairy-tale sensibilities with horror, crime, and the Gothic, exploring grief, mourning, and cycles of violence. She is the author of Lotería, Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Children of Chicago, Crime Scene, The Shoemaker’s Magician, Forgotten Sisters, and numerous short stories and poems.
Her re-released Lotería, originally her MFA thesis at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earned renewed acclaim and was named one of Esquire’s “Best Horror Books of 2023.” Her first poetry collection Poems of My Night received an Elgin Award nomination. Her second poetry collection, Into the Forest and All the Way Through was nominated for both an Elgin Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. Her novel Children of Chicago was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in Superior Achievement in a Novel and won the International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery. Her recent poetry collection, Crime Scene won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. The Shoemaker’s Magician received a starred review from Library Journal, and Forgotten Sisters earned a starred review and became a Locus Award Finalist for Horror Novel.
Pelayo holds an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BA in Journalism from Columbia College Chicago, and an MS from Roosevelt University. She is currently pursuing a PhD in English.
Her recent novel, Vanishing Daughters (Thomas & Mercer), is inspired by Charles Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.”
An active teacher and mentor, Pelayo has served as a visiting writer at Eastern Illinois University, Seton Hill University, and City Colleges of Chicago, among others.
Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.