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Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Oscar Casares earned a bachelor's degree from UT-Austin. But he didn't start writing short stories about his life in the Rio Grande Valley until he was working in an advertising job in Minnesota. He earned a master's degree from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and his first story collection, Brownsville, was released in 2003 — to great acclaim.

Casares has won a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His first novel, Amigoland, was published in August this year. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas.