Friday, March 19, 2010

Kluge Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress, Washington Post writer and award-winning book author Marie Arana will speak at the University of North Carolina Wilmington at 1 p.m. Thursday, March 25, in the Lumina Theater. Her lecture, "American Chica: The Pleasures and Perils of the Bicultural Life," will be loosely based on her award-winning 2001 memoir, American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood. The event is free and open to the public.

American Chica was a winner of the Books for a Better Life Award and a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award and the PEN/Memoir Award. Arana has written two novels published by The Dial Press: Cellophane, published in 2006 and selected as a finalist for the John Sargent Prize, and Lima Nights, published in 2009. She is also the editor of a collection of Washington Post essays, The Writing Life: How Writers Think and Work, which is used as a textbook for writing courses at universities across the country.

Arana has served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle. She has published hundreds of book reviews and feature pieces on literature and culture and lectured at universities across the country on fiction and nonfiction writing. Arana has worked as the vice president and senior editor at Harcourt Brace and Simon & Schuster publishers in New York. In 1993, she became deputy editor of the book review section of The Washington Post, and she was the editor-in-chief of Book World from 1998-2008.

Born in Peru, Arana moved to the United States at age 9, earned her B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Northwestern University, her M.A. in Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Hong Kong University and a certificate of scholarship in Mandarin at Yale University in China. She has worked as a teacher at the Hong Kong International School and as a lecturer at Hong Kong University. She received the 2009 Northwestern Alumnae Award from Northwestern University.

This event is sponsored by UNCW's College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English, Women's Studies and Resource Center and Centro Hispano as part of the university's celebration of Women's History Month.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.962.7259 or fischettid@uncw.edu