Roberta Fernández

Infobox Writer
name = Roberta Fernández


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occupation = novelist
nationality = USA
period = 1990-
genre = composite novel, story cycle
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notableworks = "Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories"
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awards = Multicultural Publisher's Exchange, Best Fiction (1991) Texas Institute of Letters


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Roberta Fernández (b. birthdate) is a Tejana novelist, scholar, critic and arts advocate. She is known for her novel "Intaglio" and for her work editing several award-winning women writers. She was a professor in in Romance Languages & Literatures and Women's Studies at the University of Georgia. [http://www.arte.uh.edu/view_book_creator.aspx?CreatorID=164 Arte Público Press bio page] , accessed 9 March 2008]

Biography

Early life and education

Fernández is a fifth-generation tejana from Laredo, Texas. She received her B.A. and an M.A. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, and her Ph.D. in Romance Languages & Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, "Towards a Contextualization of José Carlos Mariátegui’s Concept of Literary and Cultural Nationalism," examined the role of José Carlos Mariátegui in the early 20th century Peruvian cultural wars.

Fernandez held a post-doctoral fellowship at the [http://www.utexas.edu/depts/cmas/ Center for Mexican American Studies] at UT, Austin; she received a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Womanist Consortium of the [http://www.uga.edu/iaas/ Institute of African American Studies] at UGA to study Chicana literary feminism and nationalism.

Art advocacy

* Assistant to the Director, Mexican Museum in San Francisco
* Director, Bilingual Arts Program, Oakland Unified School District
* Founder, "Prisma: A Multicultural, Multilingual Women's Literary Review (1979-1982)" at Mills College
* Directed two major conferences: "The Cultural Roots of Chicana Literature, 1780-1980" (Mills Collge and Aztlán Cultural, 1981; see [http://collections.museumca.org/item_detail.jsp?from_basic_search=t&id=265343&start=51 here] for photo of the exhibit's poster) and "Latinos in the United States: Cultural Roots and Diversity" (Brown University and Casa Puerto Rico, 1985).

Editorial and curatorial work

* Editor, Arte Público Press, from 1990-1994. Several of the women she worked with received national awards for their novels.
* Curator, "Twenty-Five Years of Hispanic Literature of the United States, 1965-1990" (traveling), sponsored by the Texas Humanities Resource Center.

Marriage and children

Philosophical and/or political views

Published works

* "Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories" (1990)
* "Fronterizas: Una novela en seis cuentos" (2001; Spanish translation of "Intaglio")
* "In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States", ed. (1994; anthology)
* "En nuestras palabras: Ficción y poesía de las latinas en los Estados Unidos" (forthcoming; anthology)
* Her articles have been published in such articles as "Revista de Linguística y Filología de la Universidad de Costa Rica"; "Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies"; and "Women’s Studies"

Awards

* Three-time Lila Wallace resident at the MacDowell Colony
* Multicultural Publisher's Exchange award, Best Fiction (1991), "Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories"
* Texas Institute of Letters (1991)
* Fulbright award to the Department of English at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic (2006-2007) [ [http://www.uga.edu/iws/news/index.htm UGA Institute for Women's Studies Newsletter] (accessed March 2008)]

References

Notes/Further reading

* Gómez-Vega, Ibis. "La mujer como artista en "Intaglio"." "The Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue", 1993 Jan-Apr; 18 (1): 14-22.
* Kelley, Margot. "A Minor Revolution: Chicano/a Composite Novels and the Limits of Genre." "Ethnicity and the American Short Story." Ed. Julia Brown. New York, NY: Garland; 1997. pp. 63-84.
* Muthyala, John Sumanth. "Roberta Fernández's "Intaglio": Border Crossings and Mestiza Feminism in the Borderlands." "Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Etudes Américaines", 2000; 30 (1): 92-110. ( [http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=15&hid=8&sid=f9b3ef0b-1eb5-4cb4-be00-838c0bef6dbf%40sessionmgr103 PDF online] )

ee also

* List of Mexican American writers
* Tejano
* Arte Público Press
* Mexican American literature

External links

* [http://humanitiestexas.org/about/history.php Texas Humanities Resource Center] (scroll down), not part of Humanities Texas
* [http://texasinstituteofletters.org/ Texas Institute of Letters]

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NAME=Roberta Fernández
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