Ricardo Cortez Cruz

Ricardo Cortez Cruz is a U.S. author and educator born in Decatur, IL August 10, 1964. His first book is Straight outta Compton, published by Fiction Collective 2 in 1992. Library Journal described the book as a "rap novel" that "combines the rhythm of the streets with the frenzy of [...] jangle and the surrealism of despair and violence gone one step beyond ugly." Publisher's Weekly said, "This first novel is a hipper than hip-hop send-up of the "boyz 'n the hood" stereotypes slammed together with references to everything from Leroi Jones and Madonna to Titus Andronicus . Essentially a series of free-form short stories interlocking as much by imagery and rhythmic devices as plot or character, the novel tells of the rise and demise of an assortment of black teens in the Los Angeles ghetto of Compton." Cruz won the Nilon award for this effort.

Cruz's second novel, Five Days of Bleeding, also published by Fiction Collective 2 in 1995, was described by Larry McCaffery as a book that "combines power, speed and grace." Darius James called it an "urban folktale told in the syncopated rhythms of black-vaudeville patter," and by Gabriel Alvarez as "an ill landscape of surreal horror that's wicked (and amazingly humorous) flipside to our own reality."

Short fiction has been published by Mandorla: Nueva escritura de las Américas, Packingtown Review’s 2009 inaugural issue, Fiction International’s abject/outcast issue, African-American Review, Urban Reinventors, Crab Orchard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, Postmodern Culture, Kevin Powell’s anthology Step Into A World, and the Norton Postmodern Fiction anthology. Nonfiction has been published in Jabari Asim’s anthology Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out On Law, Justice, and Life and Becky Bradway-Hesse’s anthology In The Middle of the Middle West.

Cruz holds the rank of Professor at Illinois State University, Normal, IL, where he has won several prestigious awards.