Jaime Cortez is a California writer and artist based in Watsonville and the SF Bay Area. His writing and drawings have appeared in Kindergarten: Experimental Writing For Children, No Straight Lines, Street Art San Francisco, and Infinite Cities. He wrote and illustrated the graphic novel Sexile for AIDS Project Los Angeles. His debut short story collection, Gordo, was published in 2021. Gordo received national acclaim from the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was nominated for the Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction and the Lambda Literary Award for fiction, and was named a best book of the year by National Public Radio and Bookpage. Cortez received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MFA from UC Berkeley.