Cruz is the author of six collections of poems: Guidebooks for the Dead (Four Way Books, 2020), Dregs (Four Way Books, 2018), How the End Begins (Four Way Books, 2016), Wunderkammer (Four Way Books, 2014), The Glimmering Room (Four Way Books, 2012) and Ruin (Alice James Books, 2006). Disquieting: Essays on Silence, a collection of critical essays exploring the concept of silence as a form of resistance, was published by Book*hug in the spring of 2019. The Melancholia of Class, an exploration of melancholia and the working class, was published by Repeater Books in July of 2021.

Cruz earned an MA in German Language and Literature from Rutgers University and is currently pursuing a PhD at the European Graduate School where her area of research is psychoanalysis and philosophy. Cruz teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia University and is a visiting writer in the MFA Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also a mentor in the Low Residency MFA Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Cruz co-edits the multi- disciplinary online journal, Schlag Magazine.