Daniel Peña is a writer, blogger, book reviewer, and journalist. In 2016 he won the Pushcart Prize for his story "Safe Home." His works have been published in journals like Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Callaloo and the Kenyon Review Online. He frequently publishes articles on sites like Huffpost, The Guardian, and Plugshare. Peña is currently an English professor at UHD, he began teaching there in 2016, where he teaches fiction and creative writing courses to undergraduates. Prior to this Peña taught at Cornell and at Louisiana State University.

Early life and career

Peña was born in Austin, Texas, to Mexican American parents. Peña has a lot of extended family members who reside in Mexico. Peña has dual citizenship in the United States and Mexico. He was raised in a family that greatly valued the academic disciplines of STEM education. As a result it took awhile for him to eminence himself in the writing field. During his senior year in high school he was placed on library duty and this is where his love of reading and writing began. By the end of the year he spent most of his time in the library, where he discovered he was a gifted poetry writer, often times writing sonnets and villanelles. Before Peña entered his first semester at Texas A&M University, he interned for Texas Senator Eddie Lucio. Conflicted on whether he should study government or follow his heart and pursue his love of writing as a career, he ultimately chose to major in English. While studying to earn his bachelors degree he also completed a 150-hour program to get his pilot’s license. While he was training to become a pilot he would often see abandoned planes with Mexican tail numbers. Curious, he began to ask questions about these planes and learned about the drug cartels who send pilots across the border. He earned his bachelor's degree in English from Texas A&M University and his Masters degree in Fine Arts at Cornell University. During his time here he researched and wrote about drug trafficking. In 2014 he spent a year in Mexico. He took the opportunity to do in field research as a Fulbright scholar at the National Autonomous University to acquire inspiration for his story “Safe Home” and gain more knowledge of the drug war and the impact it has had on Mexico. Peña has said some role models that inspired him were “novelist Roberto Bolaño, poet Nicanor Parra and fiction writer Colum McCann.”

Literary contributions

Peña’s short story called "Safe Home," published by Ploughshares in 2015, is about an undocumented man named Cuauhtemoc who gets deported to Mexico from the U.S and is thrown into a world of drug smuggling and crime. This story is featured in the 2017 pushcart prize anthology. Peña’s first novel, published by Arte Público Press in 2018, is a about an undocumented family who get separated on both sides of the border. Two brothers Uli and Cuauhtémoc crash land on the other side of the border after a plane accident, leaving their mother behind in Texas. The brothers are thrown into a dangerous town, and strange land that has been devastated by drug wars. The novel explores the theme of separation of families and families caught in turmoil, as they embark to reunite with their family.

Peña is a a regular contributor for the Guardian, and Ploughshares blog. His writings have appeared on the Huffington Post as well and can be read on his blog.