Cyn Vargas Headshot
Hello I'm Cyn Vargas,

I write stories that explore what makes us human.

winner of the guild literary complex award in fiction &
semi-finalist of the Holland Prize in Fiction  

Illustrated typewriter
Best Short Story Collections of All Time
For "On the Way"
Illustrated books on hand
11 Short Story Collections Your Book Club Will Love
For "On the Way"
Illustrated opened book
Booklist
(Starred Review)
For "Nothing's Ever The Same"

books

Itzel’s 13th birthday party starts in just about the unluckiest way possible—with her dad having a heart attack. In those frantic moments, the piñata and the frosted sheetcake and the Styrofoam cups of orange soda are forgotten; the day’s highlights end up being CPR, an ambulance ride, and angioplasty. But when her father gets home from the hospital, his problems are far from over—and Itzel’s are just getting started.

Nothing’s Ever the Same chronicles a young girl’s coming of age in Chicago—growing up as her family grows apart. In masterful fashion, Cyn Vargas gives us a touching and memorable and universal story about a marriage on the brink and a teenager looking for love; it’s also a beautiful meditation on dysfunction and forgiveness, and all the times in life to which we can never return.
Reviews about this book:
“A charming debut coming-of-age novel.”
Booklist
“Young and bright Itzel immediately endears herself to readers in this touching coming-of-age story. In the face of her father’s betrayal and the deaths of loved ones, the protagonist reminds us of the ways disillusionment both sears and shapes our younger selves. Vargas depicts the heartaches and triumphs of adolescence with tenderness, honesty and humor.”
Sahar Mustafah, author of The Beauty of Your Face, a New York Times 2020 Notable Book
“Nothing’s Ever The Same is a beautiful, bittersweet snapshot of a family in crisis told in the most believable voice I’ve read in years. The conversational tone is as straight forward and impactful as a kiss or a knife to the heart.”
Rob Rufus, ALA Award-winning author of Die Young With Me
“In Nothing’s Ever the Same, Cyn Vargas offers a deeply human, empathetic, and masterfully observed chronicle of family, love, and those years at the cusp of adulthood filled with wild and vivid emotion. This compact book contains a mighty heart.”
Jeff Zentner, award-winning author of In the Wild Light
"Nothing's Ever the Same is a work of restraint and understatement, its young narrator capable of stoic relating of events as well as emotional reaction. The effect is deeply moving."
Shelf Awareness
“Zeroing in on the moments when a young person is confronted by their parents' flaws, Cyn Vargas shares a tale of acceptance and coming-of-age with supernatural levels of poignancy and poetry. You will fly through this story, as it courses through your veins.”
Chris L. Terry, author of Black Card and Zero Fade,
co-editor of Black Punk Now
“With a keen sense of observation and a sharp sense of humor, Cyn Vargas fully inhabits the voice of Itzel, the narrator of Nothing’s Ever the Same. A moving story of family and the ways we hurt and survive one another, Nothing’s Ever the Same is like Itzel herself: smart, funny, poignant, and real. With this heartfelt novella, Cyn Vargas reminds readers once again why she was named “A Writer to Watch” by Chicago’s Guild Literary Complex. Watch her; read her.”
Patricia Ann McNair, author of Responsible Adults
“A heartfelt and bittersweet tale, told with the sort of insight and eloquence we’ve come to expect from the fiction of Cyn Vargas. A master of the ‘child dealing with the problematic behavior of adults’ short story, this time Cyn gives us a novella-length tale with a teen-girl hero you can’t help but root for, the paradise of a childhood innocence lost, and something like the beginning of mature understanding gained. A most satisfying read, to be sure.”
Eric Charles May, author of Bedrock Faith
Cyn Vargas's debut explores the whims and follies of the heart.

When a mother disappears in Guatemala, her daughter refuses to accept she's gone; a divorced DMV employee falls in love during a driving lesson; a young girl shares a well-kept family secret; a bad haircut is the last straw in a crumbling marriage.

This elegant and lovely set of stories by a master of the craft won widespread praise in its first printing; this revised new edition promises to bring her work to the wider audience she deserves. Join us on this trip from the frozen north to the tropical south, and through the hopes and fears and dreams and visions that keep us cycling through new destinations and old.
Reviews about this book:
"Best Short Story Collections of All Time"
Book Scrolling
"Top 5 Fiction Books by Chicago Authors"
NEWCITY LIT
"Chicago's Favorite Books of 2015"
CHICAGO BOOK REVIEW
"Honorable Mention, 2015 Book of the Year"
CHICAGO WRITERS ASSOCIATION
"11 Short Story Collections Your Book Club Will Love"
Book Scrolling
"Cyn Vargas’ debut collection, On the Way, is marked by a sense of universal heartbreak and hope. In a dozen stories that quietly and considerately follow the lives of displaced, alienated Central Americans whose lives revolve around immigration, expatriation and escapes, Vargas shows how deeply many of the world’s upheavals affect individuals.Vargas deftly uses a candid, unadorned voice to frame an often unkind world. Her hopeful conclusion in these tales, though, is that nobody is ever truly alone.
Josh Potter
“In her debut collection, Vargas invests her characters with heart while ably articulating their missed connections. An American girl cannot accept her mother’s disappearance while they are visiting relatives in Guatemala; a young woman assaulted by her father after her parents’ divorce cannot forgive her mother for failing to intervene; a diffident DMV employee cannot speak out when he falls for a young woman taking a driving test. VERDICT Moving and
accomplished.”
Barbara Hoffert 
"One of the more recent short story collections to have made a major impact on me,  On the Way  is Vargas’ big debut and I was seriously impressed. Her characters are the stories, and nearly all of the stories follow some version of a loss or gain in life. Touching on those moments in life when you wish to act out but choose to stay in the shadows, this short collection of short stories is a perfect fit for any book club."
Alex Weiss

About CYN

Cyn Vargas has garnered widespread acclaim for her short story collection, On The Way, earning praise from Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, and other notable sources. Her work was honored as one of Book Scrolling's Best Short Story Collections of All Time and lauded by the Chicago Book Review and Writers Association. Her latest book, Nothing's Ever The Same, was awarded a starred review from Booklist, which hailed it as a"charming debut coming-of-age novel."

Vargas's writing graces esteemed literary magazines like Split Lip, Word Riot, and Hypertext. One of her pieces was chosen as a Symphony Space Selected Short, presented live, and later released as a podcast.

Beyond her writing accomplishments, Cyn is an esteemed member of the literary community. She serves on the Board of Directors for Hypertext Studio, and in recognition of her teaching excellence, she was voted Stories Matter Foundation's 2022 Instructor of the Year.

Cyn holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago and takes great pride in her heritage as a first-generation American with El Salvadoran and Guatemalan roots.

Reviews

Cyn Vargas’ debut collection, On the Way, is marked by a sense of universal heartbreak and hope. In a dozen stories that quietly and considerately follow the lives of displaced, alienated Central Americans whose lives revolve around immigration, expatriation and escapes, Vargas shows how deeply many of the world’s upheavals affect individuals.

Vargas deftly uses a candid, unadorned voice to frame an often unkind world. Her hopeful conclusion in these tales, though, is that nobody is ever truly alone.
Josh Potter
In her debut collection, Vargas invests her characters with heart while ably articulating their missed connections. An American girl cannot accept her mother’s disappearance while they are visiting relatives in Guatemala; a young woman assaulted by her father after her parents’ divorce cannot forgive her mother for failing to intervene; a diffident DMV employee cannot speak out when he falls for a young woman taking a driving test. VERDICT Moving and accomplished.
Barbara Hoffert
One of the more recent short story collections to have made a major impact on me,  On the Way  is Vargas’ big debut and I was seriously impressed. Her characters are the stories, and nearly all of the stories follow some version of a loss or gain in life. Touching on those moments in life when you wish to act out but choose to stay in the shadows, this short collection of short stories is a perfect fit for any book club.
Alex Weiss
In this debut collection, Vargas manages to strip human connection down to its messy, infuriating, and ultimately beautiful core. With authentic prose, she straps relationships—familial, friendly, romantic, sexual—to chairs and shines on them a bright light, breaking each down with a calm, introspective interrogation until they reveal their secrets. Every story digs deep into what it means to be tethered to someone else in an honest, unrelenting way that will leave readers both squirming and desperately needing more.
INTO THE VOID MAGAZINE
On the Way is a group of stories that are often about loss, regret, and unrequited feelings. What almost every story demonstrates is the moment in a character’s life beyond which everything will have to change. However, one thing Vargas is willing to show—which many other writers are not—is the painful, often boundless stretch of time between the moment of drama and its distant resonance: her stories echo Alice Munro’s as they leapfrog months, even years, using nothing more than a paragraph break.
Heavy Feather Review
Her language feels like a colorful swirl, whether it illustrates sunny Guatemala or gritty Chicago. Her writing veers between brusque and elaborate sentences, third and first person, but never feels prescribed, always appropriate and real. She’s got, quite simply, a way with words.
Newcity Lit
These stories are complex and full-bodied, heady with sensual details and rich with character. Vargas’ writing style is on lockdown, and her exceptional prose will leave readers of all ages thoroughly satisfied.

Chicago Literati
Cyn Vargas has the ability to capture dreamily-fleeting moments other writers overlook. Cyn’s debut collection showcases her sharp humor and keen observations. The stories explore men and women, parents and children, immigrants, abuse, and the struggles of first-generation Americans. Her stories shift elegantly from humorous to gut-wrenching.
Hypertext Magazine
The prose in Cyn Vargas’s debut collection, On the Way, has a casual, unforced power. Vargas is a writer capable of sketching out a setting in a few short sentences, and this skill with compression allows her to present a much wider array of fictional worlds than one might expect from such a slim volume.
Monkeybicycle
The first word that came to mind after reading this collection was graceful. Cyn Vargas puts the reader in an immediate state of self-reflection with her stories. If you can stand some self-reflection on loneliness, childhood, marriage, and family secrets, then this book will not disappoint you.
Staff Pick, Greenlight Bookstore
The narrators of Cyn Vargas’s stories tell quiet, deceptively simple accounts of loss, family mysteries, and their earned understanding of their experiences. The stories in On the Way are simple in language and prose style and complex in their emotional freight… Like the balance of the stories, the reader is on sure footing from the first paragraphs. A story map is laid out, and even if we don’t know the path we will follow, the territory and the perspective are well defined. No person is just one thing, Vargas seems to say. We seem to be this, but then we learn more, and discover we are something elseinstead. Each narrator has a story they know to tell, but a second story bleeds through, a story that speaks of darkness, fear, compassion, or courage, a story that reveals itself in the act of telling.
Necessary Fiction
First: I flat-out love this book. I do. Second: I love that Cyn Vargas is in the world to have written this book. She’s a mischievously good writer who lures you in with her humor and then breaks your heart in these generous and compelling stories about good people who are often haunted by what’s missing in their lives. Third: If you are reading this, start reaching for your credit card. I want you to buy this book. It’ll be the best decision you’ve made in a long, long time. Trust me.
JOHN MCNALLY, author of The Book of Ralph
Cyn Vargas brings her readers a whole world of unforgettable women, old and young, tough andgetting tougher. Her narrators must continually negotiate with the tragedy, cruelty, and sweetness oftheir ever-changing lives, against the twin landscapes of America and Central America. In these fresh,sensual stories, Vargas bravely explores family, friendship and irreconcilable loss, and she will break your heart nicely.
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL, author of the bestselling novel, Once Upon a River
It’s rare for stories about childhood, friendship, the elderly, marriage, family secrets, and loneliness and longing to be told with quiet beauty and grace, but the stories in ON THE WAY accomplish just that. Cyn Vargas approaches her characters with a delicate and loving hand, always honest, sometimes angry, but never judgmental. Just like how we approach the people we love – whether we’re bound to them by blood or by choice.
MARK PROTOSEVICH screenwriter, I Am Legend, Oldboy, The Cell

Publications