Achy Obejas

"Achy Obejas writes like an angel: flush with power, vision and hope ... one of the Caribbean's most important writers."

Junot Diaz, author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Come March 2009, Achy will have a new as-yet-untitled novel, set completely in Cuba, with Akashic Books! For updates, you can check in here or at www.akashicbooks.com.

In the meantime, Havana Noir (Akashic, 2007), the most recent project to come from Achy, has been garnering amazing critical claim from The Believer, The Miami Herald, and a host of others. Reviews inside! A groundbreaking collection of crime stories set in the Cuban capital, it features work by writers on and off the island, including Leonardo Padura, Mylene Fernández, Miguel Mejides, Carolina García-Aguilera, Pablo Medina and a dozen more of the most exciting Cuban and Cuban-American writers today. Besides editing the volume, Achy also translated 13 of the stories from Spanish to English.

Early next fall, her translation of Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao will make her one of the few translators working to and from both English and Spanish.

November brought Achy's first poetry collection, This is What Happened in Our Other Life (A Midsummer's Night Press, 2007: www.amidsummernightspress.com). The debut chapbook in the press' Body Language Series, it is the first time that Achy's verse has ever been published in book form. In December and January, This is What Happened in Our Life reached #5 and #2 on the Poetry Foundation's bestseller list!

Havana-born Achy is the author of Days of Awe, a critically acclaimed novel (Ballantine/Random House, 2001) about the tensions between public and private identities set against the backdrop of the Jewish community in Cuba.

Her other books include Memory Mambo, a novel, and We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?, a collection of short stories (both from Cleis: www.cleispress.com). Both books, along with Days of Awe, are regularly taught at colleges and universities throughout the U.S.

Her fiction and poetry have also appeared in First Person Queer (Arsenal Pulp), Chicago Noir (Akashic), The Cuba Reader (Duke University), Cuba on the Verge (Bullfinch Press), Isla Tan Dulce (Letras Cubanas/Cuba), Estatuas de Sal, (Ediciones Union/Cuba), The Way We Write Now (Birch Lane), A Fine Excess: Fifty Years of the Beloit Poetry Journal (The Beloit Poetry Journal Foundation) and many other anthologies.

Achy's poetry and fiction have been published in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Indiana Review, Story, La Gaceta de Cuba, Habana Elegante, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Best of Helicon Nine, Another Chicago Magazine, Abraxas; Antigonish Review, Bilingual Review, Conditions, Ikon, Interstate, Phoebe/George Mason University Review, Rambunctious Review, Revista Chicano-Riqueña, Sing Heavenly Muse!, Sinister Wisdom, Strong Coffee, Third Woman, and many others.

An award-winning journalist, she worked for more than ten years for the Chicago Tribune writing and reporting about arts and culture. Among literally thousands of stories, she helped cover Pope John Paul II's historic 1998 visit to Cuba, the arrival of Al-Queda prisoners in Guantánamo, the Versace murder, and the AIDS epidemic.

She writes regularly about Latin music for the Washington Post and about books for In These Times.

Her articles have appeared in the Village Voice, Vogue, Playboy, Los Angeles Times, MS, Weep, Nerve.com, Latina, Latin Girl, Poz en Español, The Nation, Out, Chicago Reader, The Advocate, Girlfriends, Windy City Times, High Performance, New City, Chicago Reporter, The Catalyst, Chicago, Chicago Sun-Times, Hispanic, La Raza, Hispanic Link (a bilingual national syndication service), and many others.

Achy's translation projects have included Maria Torres Piers' By Heart (Temple University Press); catalogue text for "Passionately Cuban," an art exhibition at the University of Albany, Albany, New York; catalogue text for the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; Picturing Cuba (University of New Mexico Press, 2002) by E. Wright Ledbetter; and articles for the Chicago Tribune. She was recently contracted by the family of the late Cuban poet laureate Nicolás Guillén to produce a new translation of his work, including the classic "Motivos de Son" (the only authorized English version was previously translated by Langston Hughes in 1948)

During her career, Achy has received a Pulitzer for a Tribune team investigation, the Studs Terkel Journalism Prize, several Peter Lisagor journalism honors, two Lambda Literary awards, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, and residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale and the Virginia Center for the Arts, among other honors.

Her work has been translated into Spanish, German, Hungarian and Farsi. She has lectured and read her work in the U.S., Cuba, Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Australia, and has served as the Springer Writer-in-Residence at the University of Chicago and the Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Hawai'i.

Achy Obejas is currently the Sor Juana Visiting Writer at DePaul University in Chicago.

For additonal info, check out www.myspace.com/achylandia.

If you want to receive regular information about Achy's upcoming publications and appearances, contact inov@aol.com.