H. G. CARRILLO (born Herman Glenn Carroll) was an American fiction writer and academic born on this date (d:2020);
H. G. Carrillo was a writer’s writer—not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. He began writing later in life, and was in his mid-forties when his first novel, “Loosing My Espanish,” was published. The book, which describes a Cuban-immigrant experience, was hailed as a triumph of Latino fiction; Junot Díaz praised the author’s “formidable” talent, calling his “lyricism pitch-perfect and his compassion limitless.” Carrillo went on to literary positions in and outside of the academy. He was an early casualty of the COVID pandemic, dying in the spring of 2020 at the age of fifty-nine. But his obituary—instead of tying a bow on the historical record—unspooled in quite a different direction, revealing secrets that Carrillo had worked for decades to conceal
In the 1990s, he began writing as "H. G. Carrillo," and he eventually adopted that identity in his private life as well. Carroll constructed a false claim that he was a Cuban immigrant who had left Cuba with his family at the age of seven; in fact, he was an African-American. Carroll wrote frequently about the Cuban immigrant experience in the United States, including in his only novel, Loosing My Espanish (2004). He was an assistant professor of English at George Washington University from 2007 to 2013, and was later chair of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.
Carroll kept his true identity hidden from those close to him, including his husband, whom he married in 2015. Only after his death in April 2020 did the true details of his life become publicly known.
Carroll established a pattern of lying about his life by early adulthood. He would frequently fabricate his background to romantic partners and friends, variously claiming that he had attended or graduated from schools he was never admitted to, that he had worked as a sportswriter for a Detroit newspaper and written stories for The New Yorker, or that he had a child with a French woman, and that their child went on to attend the Juilliard School. One former partner said, "Herman walked the planet lying, and he might occasionally tell the truth. It wasn't malicious – it was a compulsion".
In or around 1989, Carroll was hired to manage a call center for HBO, where he remained for the following six years. The exact reason for his departure was unclear, though he may have been dismissed after his employers discovered he did not have a bachelor's degree, as he had claimed. In 1995, he enrolled at DePaul University in Chicago, where he received his B.A. in Spanish and English in 2000. It was during this time that he began constructing the H. G. Carrillo persona. In 2003, he legally changed his last name to Carrillo, and he went on to receive an MFA from Cornell University in 2007.
Carroll was gay; he was married to entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp, and they lived in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. He had maintained his fabrications throughout his personal life. VanEngelsdorp later remarked that "the only true things he ever told me about his life was his birthday and the fact that he was Catholic". Carroll's first and only full-length novel, Loosing My Espanish (Pantheon, 2004), addresses the complexities of Latino immigration, religiously associated education, homosexuality, and lower-class struggles from a Cuban immigrant's perspective. The novel was published under the Carrillo name.
Carroll was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer in the last months of his life. The illness and the severe side effects of his medication caused a steep decline in his health. In April 2020, he collapsed at his home and was admitted to a hospital in Washington, D.C., during the COVID-19 pandemic. While there, he contracted COVID-19, and he died from the disease on April 20, six days before his 60th birthday.
After the TheWashington Post obituary which reported on Carroll's life as he had misrepresented it, relatives in Michigan realized that he had fabricated his identity and informed Carroll's husband and the newspaper accordingly. The discovery of Carroll's fabrication was a shocking surprise to his colleagues as well as his close friends. Carroll's family had varied reactions: his sister said that he was "very talented" but "always eccentric", though she added that their mother, who died in 2015, had been aware of his fabrications and was "really hurt by the whole façade". Similarly, while many friends and former students expressed resentment towards Carroll after learning of his deceit, vanEngelsdorp felt more ambivalent.
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