CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ ON THE POWER OF SHOWING UP AND CREATING LITERACY MAGIC

While most of Hinsdale is waking up, Cristina Henríquez is already at her desk, a cup of tea steaming beside her, a gel-tip pen in hand, and a notebook open before her. No computer, no phone, just the page. “I had a sign above my desk for many years that says, ‘Just stay in the chair,'” Henríquez tells me, her voice carrying the conviction of someone who has learned that creativity isn’t always about inspiration. Sometimes it’s simply about showing up. “If I can create the conditions for making creativity happen, that’s what I’m in charge of.” For Henríquez, those conditions are deceptively simple: three to four hours each morning, pen to paper, distractions banished. It’s a discipline she’s maintained through four acclaimed novels, parenthood, and the quiet pressure that comes with literary success.

Despite nearly two decades in the community, she still speaks of her Delaware upbringing as home, the East Coast state where her Panamanian father and New Jersey-born mother raised her before her creative path led her first to Northwestern University for creative writing, then to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and ultimately to literary acclaim. The contrast between her inner literary life and her suburban surroundings isn’t lost on her. Without a robust local writing community, Henríquez has cultivated relationships with fellow writers from her Iowa days while building a separate circle of “mom friends” in Hinsdale. Her writing life exists in quiet parallel to her community life.

“I work in the library a lot,” she says, explaining that her breakthrough novel, The Book of Unknown Americans, was largely written at the Hinsdale Public Library, where she later formed a partnership with librarian Mike Oetting during the research for her latest work. “I would just email him, or he would see me coming, and he was probably like, ‘Oh no, what do you need now?'” she laughs. What she needed were obscure historical materials: maps of Ridgetown, Barbados from 1907, details about fishing lines in early 20th-century Central America, all pieces of the intricate historical puzzle that would become The Great Divide, her latest novel about the Panama Canal. (Make sure to reserve your copy and check it out at the Hinsdale Library!)

“I grew up going to Panama every year since I was eight months old,” Henríquez explains, describing how the canal had simmered in her imagination for two decades before she finally felt ready to tackle it. “I felt like I didn’t have the writerly skill yet to tackle that properly,” she says of the earlier hesitation. “It had to be big, it had to be ambitious.” The Great Divide required six months of intensive research before she put pen to paper, followed by years of writing and even more research. Her Panamanian father became her unofficial research assistant, and her extended family helped gather documents across Panama City. What began as a personal project became a family mission spanning generations and borders.

The unique thing about Henríquez? She exclusively writes in notebooks, abandoning computers where “my whole life’s in there” for the distraction-free sanctity of paper. Her process involves notation systems (double slashes marking alternate phrasings), and she focuses on time spent rather than word counts, trusting that showing up consistently will yield results. This discipline didn’t emerge fully formed. Before The Book of Unknown Americans brought wider recognition, Henríquez worked jobs that kept her creative dreams on life support. At a movie theater in Dallas, she wrote short stories on the backs of printed schedules between shows. Later, she wrote press releases for a PBS/NPR station while working on her fiction at night.

Success came gradually. She secured an agent after graduating from Iowa, and a book of short stories, Come Together, Fall Apart, was soon published. Years later, her first novel, The World in Half, was born, followed by Unknown Americans, which she describes as “a turning point that resonated with people in a way I didn’t anticipate.” That success, however, created its own challenges. “I felt like there was something in particular that people now wanted from—’Oh, I’m in this lane now.'” This sense of expectation initially paralyzed her until she decided to finally pursue the Panama Canal novel she’d long contemplated.

When she’s not writing, Henríquez can be found in and around Hinsdale with her husband (a Hinsdale native) and their two children. You’ll likely see her at Kramer’s grocery (“I have the whole layout memorized”), at Café la Fortuna for coffee, or while walking around the neighborhood streets with friends. She appreciates that her children are forming their own relationships with the community she has called home for nearly two decades.

As our conversation winds down, I ask if she ever thinks about seeing her books adapted to film. She pauses, considering. “I want my characters to be in the world,” she says finally. But like many authors, the visual translation remains difficult to imagine. “I can see it in my mind. I can hear it,” she says of her work. Even audiobook versions feel “jarring” compared to the voice in her head.

For now, Henríquez remains devoted to the page, the morning quiet, and the simple discipline of staying in the chair. Twenty years after first imagining her latest novel, the patience of her approach has paid off, proof that sometimes the most important creative act is simply showing up, day after day, ready to work. cristinahenriquez.com