He is the author of Brownsville: Stories (2003) and Amigoland: A Novel (2009). Casares received the Dobie Paisano Fellowship at The University of Texas-Austin in 2002, the James A. Michener Award from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2002, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2006. He received a B.S. in Advertising from The University of Texas at Austin and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.]