Award-winning authors Lorraine Lopez and Judith Ortiz Cofer to speak at Southern Festival of Books

Lopez is assistant professor at Vanderbilt, author of Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories

Ortiz Cofer teaches at Georgia, most recently authored A Love Story Beginning in Spanish: Poems

This weekend's Southern Festival of Books will feature Vanderbilt assistant professor Lorraine Lopez on Sunday from noon to 1 p.m. in the Senate Chambers of the Tennessee State Capitol; and also Judith Ortiz Cofer, professor at the University of Georgia, from 4:30-5:30pm on Saturday in the Old Supreme Court Room.

According to her bio, "Latina poet and fiction writer Lorraine López is the winner of the first Miguel Mármol Prize (2002). Her stories have appeared in numerous publications, including New Letters, The Crab Orchard Review, The U.S. Latino Review, and The Watershed Anthology. She is Co-Founder and Education Programs Director for the Institute for Violence Prevention in Athens, Georgia, and she is Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is author of the critically received Soy la Avon Lady And Other Stories, a stunning debut collection of 11 short stories that articulates the spectrum of the Latino community. She completed her undergraduate degree at California State University, Northridge, and earned her M.A. and PhD at the University of Georgia."

As for Ortiz Cofer, the Scene has an extensive interview with her in this week's cover story (here).

This bio appears on Ortiz Cofer's web site:

Judith Ortiz Cofer is the author of A Love Story Beginning in Spanish: Poems; Call Me Maria, a young adult novel; The Meaning of Consuelo, a novel; Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer, a collection of essays; The Line of the Sun, a novel; Silent Dancing, a collection of essays and poetry; two books of poetry, Terms of Survival and Reaching for the Mainland; and The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Glamour and other journals. Her work 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.

Professor Cofer has received numerous awards and honors for her writing. Most recently, The Latin Deli was selected for the 2005 Georgia Top 25 Reading List, a project of the Georgia Center for the Book made up of books set in Georgia or written by a resident or former resident of the state. Also in 2005, Call Me Maria was selected as one of two texts to receive Honorable Mention for the 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 Meaning of Consuelo was selected as one of two winners of the 2003 Americas Award. The novel was also included on the New York Public Library's "Books for the Teen Age 2004 List." In addition, Professor Cofer has received over 30 fellowships and grants, including awards from the University of Georgia Research Foundation, the University of Georgia Center for the Humanities and Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.