Judith Ortiz Cofer
is the author of the poetry collections A
Love Story Beginning in Spanish: Poems, Terms of Survival and
Reaching
for the Mainland; the novels Call Me Maria, The Meaning
of Consuelo, and The Line of the Sun; and the collections Woman
in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer, Silent Dancing,
and The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry. Her work has appeared
in The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review,
Glamour and other journals, and has been included in numerous textbooks
and anthologies including: Best American Essays 1991, The
Norton Book of Women's Lives, The Norton Introduction to Literature,
The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Heath Anthology of American
Literature, The Pushcart Prize, and the O. Henry Prize
Stories. The Meaning of Consuelo was selected as one of two winners
of the 2003 Americas Award, sponsored by the National Consortium
of Latin American Studies Programs, for U.S. published titles
that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the
Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. The novel was also
included on the New York Public Library's “Books for
the Teen Age 2004 List.” A PEN/Martha Albrand Special
Citation in non-fiction was awarded to her for Silent Dancing,
also the Anisfield Wolf Book Award for The Latin Deli, and
her work has been selected for the Syndicated Fiction Project.
She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Witter Bynner
Foundation for poetry. A collection of short stories, An
Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio, was named a Best Book of the
Year, 1995-96 by the American Library Association. It was awarded
the first Pura Belpre medal by REFORMA of ALA in 1996. La
linea del sol, the Spanish translation by Elena Olazagasti-Segovia
of The Line of the Sun, was published in 1997 by the University
of Puerto Rico Press. In 1998, The Year of Our Revolution:
New and Selected Stories and Poems was awarded a Paterson Book
Prize by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College.
The Spanish translation by Elena Olazagasti-Segovia of Silent
Dancing, Bailando en silencio was published by Arte Publico
Press in 1998. Cofer is currently the Franklin Professor of
English at the University of Georgia.