Julia Alvarez

Infobox author

birthname = Julia Alvarez
birthdate = birth date|1950|03|27|df=yes
birthplace = New York City, New York
nationality = Dominican-American
genre = Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry
occupation = Author, essayist, poet
yearsactive = 1975-present
domesticpartner = Bill Eichner

Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Born in New York, she and her family moved back to their native Dominican Republic while she was still an infant. [http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/chh/bio/alvarez_j.htm] Her breakthrough came in 1991 with the publishing of the international bestseller How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, which was subsequently chosen as a notable selection by the American Library Association. [http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Alvarez.html]

Early Life

Alvarez and her family moved from New York to the Dominican Republic when she was three months old, where she lived until the age of 10. In 1960, the family fled back to the United States, after her father participated in the underground against the military dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. Three months later the leaders of the underground railroad, the Mirabal sisters, were murdered. She based her second novel, "In the Time of the Butterflies", on those murders [http://www.juliaalvarez.com/about] , which was subsequently made into a film produced by Salma Hayek. Although always having loved stories, she remarks that her arrival to the United States was when her passion for literature began: "I grew up in the D.R. very poor in culture --- I didn't know any readers; it was sort of an antisocial thing. We had two readers in the extended family --- our culture is out there, social, and to go read in a corner was considered strange. I didn't grow up with a lot of books around or readers around and I think my love of storytelling came from the oral culture around me. When I came to this country, I became a reader." [http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-alvarez-julia.asp]

Education

Alvarez graduated from Abbot Academy in 1967. She attended Middlebury College in 1971, after transferring from Connecticut College, which she attended from 1967 to 1969. She received her Masters in Creative Writing from Syracuse University in 1975. [http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/alvarez_julia.html]

Teaching career

Alvarez was a poet in the schools for the Kentucky Arts Commission from 1975 to 1977. In that capacity she visited elementary schools, high schools, colleges and communities throughout the state conducting writing workshops and giving readings. Alvarez was told by her parents, before their deaths, that she would be better off as a lawyer but she followed her passion of the literary arts.

In 1978, she served in the same capacity with senior citizens in Fayetteville, North Carolina, under the aegis of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arts Council of Fayetteville. This project produced an anthology, "Old Age Ain't For Sissies". She also conducted workshops in English and Spanish at Mary Williams Elementary School in Wilmington, Delaware sponsored by the Delaware Arts Council and the Wilmington School District. This project produced an anthology, "Yo Soy/I Am".

Alvarez taught English and creative writing at California State University, Fresno, College of the Sequoias, Phillips Andover Academy, University of Vermont, George Washington University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before coming to Middlebury College as an assistant professor in 1988. She was promoted to full professor in 1996 and resigned her tenured position to write full time in 1998. The college created the position of writer-in-residence for her, where she continues to teach creative writing on a part-time basis, advise Latino students, and serve as an outside reader for creative writing theses by English majors.

Grants and honors

Alvarez has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" was the winner of the 1991 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for works which present a multicultural viewpoint. Some of her poetry manuscripts now have a permanent home in the New York Public Library, where she was featured in an exhibit, “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, From John Donne to Julia Alvarez." [http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-alvarez-julia.asp]

She received the Prize from Academy of American Poetry in 1974, first prize in narrative from the Third Woman Press Award in 1986, and received an award from the General Electric Foundation in 1986. Her novel "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" was selected as a notable book from the American Library Association in 1992. [http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Alvarez.html]

Personal Life

Alvarez currently resides in the Champlain Valley in Vermont, U.S.A. She and her partner Bill Eichner, a physician, [http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum171.php http://www.juliaalvarez.com/about/] created Alta Gracia, a farm-literacy center dedicated to the growth of organic coffee through environmental stability and promoting literacy world-wide. [http://www.cafealtagracia.com]

List of works

* "Homecoming" (1984) (poetry)
* "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" (1991) (fiction)
* "In the Time of the Butterflies" (1994) (fiction)
* "The Other Side" ("El Otro Lado") (1995) (poetry)
* "Homecoming: New and Selected Poems" (1996) (poetry) a reissue of the 1984 volume, with new poems
* "¡Yo!" (1997) (fiction)
* "Something to Declare" (1998) (collected essays)
* "Seven Trees" (1998) (poetry)
* "In the Name of Salomé" (2000) (fiction)
* "The Secret Footprints" (2001) (fiction)
* "How Tia Lola Came to visit Stay" (2001) (fiction)
* "A Cafecito Story" (2001) (fiction)
* "Before We Were Free" (2002) (fiction)
* "The Woman I Kept to Myself" (2004) (poetry)
* "Finding Miracles" (2004) (fiction)
* "Gift of Gracias: The Legend of Altagracia" (2004) (children's book)
* "Saving the World" (2006) (fiction)
* "Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA" (2007) (nonfiction)

Notes

External links

* [http://litminds.org/blog/2007/08/julia_alvarez_talks_about_stor.html LitMinds interview with Julia Alvarez]
* [http://www.alvarezjulia.com/ Alvarez Julia.com] – official website
* [http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-alvarez-julia.asp Book Reporter interview with Alvarez on "In the Name of Salome"]
* [http://www.giganticpictures.com/thesuitor.html "The Suitor", PBS adaptation of Julia's Alvarez's short story, from the collection "Yo!"]