María Isabel Álvarez is a first-generation Guatemalan American writer. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a BA in English Literature from Arizona State University.

For her writing, she has been awarded the Phyllis Grant Zellmer Prize for fiction, as well as fellowships and grants from The Elizabeth George Foundation, Speculative Literature Foundation, Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Colgate Writers Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, and Hedgebrook.

Her short fiction is published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, and Guernica, among other venues.

She lives in Arizona, where she is at work on a story collection about Guatemalan Americans in the desert Southwest.