Elaine Castillo was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Comparative Literature. Her debut novel America Is Not the Heart was named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus Reviews, The New York Public Library, The New York Post, The Boston Globe, Real Simple, Lit Hub, and more. It has been nominated for the Elle Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, the Aspen Words Prize, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Book Award, and the California Book Award. Her writing can be found in The New York Times, The Nation, Freeman’s, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, and elsewhere.