Carmen Bardeguez-Brown is the author of For the Love of Cooking: Chef Tao, a Memoir (2022). Her published poetry collection includes Meditation on Love, Dancing, Loss and Forgiveness (2022); Three Poets/Tres Poetas, a collaboration with Marlena Maduro Baraf and Julio César Paz (2022); Lo que aprendà al otro lado del mundo, a collaboration with author Julio César Paz (2020); Dreaming Rhythms: Despertando el Silencio (2016); and Straight from the Drums (2012).  Her poetry appears in several anthologies and poetry magazines: Trauma Tresses & Truth ed. by Lizette Wanzer (2021); Boundaries…
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Award-winning Puerto Rican author Theresa Varela was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is the recipient of multiple International Latino Book Awards (ILBA): Murder in Red Hook: A Daisy Muñiz Mystery (2022), Coney Island Siren (2020), Nights of Indigo Blue: A Daisy Muñiz Mystery (2016) and Covering the Sun with My Hand (2015). She holds a PhD in Nursing Research and Theory Development and has worked more than twenty-five years in the mental health field in New York City blending spirituality with culture for healing. Theresa Varela’s relationships…
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Almost a Woman is a sequel to When I Was Puerto Rican, the memoir of Esmeralda Santiago’s childhood. The story covers her life as an adolescent and young woman when she lived in Brooklyn, New York, with her mother (Mami) and 10 siblings during the 1960s. As Puerto Rican immigrants, the family suffered through periods of poverty exemplified by the author’s trips to the welfare office with Mami, where she translated her mother’s Spanish so that they could obtain benefits. Esmeralda’s good humor, zest for life and fighting spirit permeate…
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A crucial, clear-eyed accounting of Puerto Rico’s 122 years as a colony of the US. Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew impossible to ignore in 2017, in the wake of Hurricane MarÃa, as the physical destruction compounded the infrastructure collapse and trauma inflicted by the debt crisis. In Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a…
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Esmeralda Santiago is the author of three groundbreaking memoirs;  When I was Puerto Rican and Almost A Woman, which she adapted into a Peabody Award-winning movie for PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre, and The Turkish Lover. Her novels include America’s Dream, the national best seller Conquistadora, and Las Madres. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Esmeralda lives with her husband documentary filmmaker Frank Cantor in Westchester County, New York. Esmeralda Santiago, a name synonymous with resilience and the power of storytelling, was born in 1948 amidst the sugarcane fields of Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. The eldest of eleven children, her early…
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The North American Academy of the Spanish Language has bestowed its 2022 Enrique Anderson Imbert Award upon the renowned Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi. This national award recognizes those who have made sustained and significant contributions to the knowledge and dissemination of the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures in the United States. “The jury unanimously selected Giannina Braschi whose rich and bountiful career defies any simplifying classification,” announced Carlos E. Paldao, director of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language. “Her prolific career, which extends from groundbreaking research on Hispanic classics to her spectacular work as a…
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