Hi! I’m Lenika. (LEH-nick-uh)
My memoir, Saltwater Dreaming: The Making of an Island Daughter, will be out May 4, 2027 from Atria Books.
An intimate memoir of loss and reclamation, and a love letter to Guam, from former The Atlantic editor and journalist Lenika Cruz.
Preorder from your local bookstore or retailer here.
What readers are saying:
"Lenika Cruz writes with poetry and passion about grief, shame, and the pull of the homes we leave behind. Saltwater Dreaming is a touching and sensitive memoir of loss."
—Laila Lalami, bestselling author of The Dream Hotel
"Saltwater Dreaming: The Making of an Island Daughter is an astounding story about a young woman turning her intelligent and compassionate gaze on her family’s history and homeland, in search of answers about what it means to arrive at home. Told with elegance and a journalist’s precision, Lenika Cruz weaves a tale like no other that spans multiple generations and examines colonialism and its reverberations, exploring how we are bound by history, duty and love to family and place, despite the hurt they may have once wrought.”
—Kat Chow, author of Seeing Ghosts
"A beautiful telling of terrible truths, Saltwater Dreaming is a deeply personal reckoning with a painful past—not only hers, but ours ... In Guam, we are always coming back from burying the dead. But this book is teeming with more than ghosts. It is teeming with love."
—Julian Aguon, author of No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies
I’m a writer and editor of Chamorro, Okinawan, and Filipino heritage from the beautiful Pacific island of Guam.
I was formerly a senior editor at The Atlantic, where I covered culture for ten years. I published an essay collection titled On BTS: Pop Music, Fandom, Sincerity with Zando in 2023.
After a decade in Washington, DC, I moved back to Southern California, where I spent much of my youth, to study and teach creative writing at UC Riverside.
I currently live with my husband and cat in Łódź, Poland, where I am working on fiction.
My literary agents are Lucy Carson and Marin Takikawa with the Friedrich Agency.
Photo credit: Nicolai Haddal