LEXINGTON, Va., Oct. 13, 2022—Virginia Military Institute welcomes guest speaker Dr. Uva de Aragón for a lecture titled, “The Fortune (or Curse) of Being a Writer” on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 7:45 p.m. at Preston Library located at 411 Letcher Avenue on post. It is free and open to the public.

de Aragón has written extensively as an academic, journalist, and creative writer, and has published more than a dozen books of poems, essays, short stories, novels, and a play. She is a columnist for Diario Las Americas and El Nuevo Herald, and maintains a blog, Habanera soy, which is read worldwide.

Until her retirement in 2011, de Aragón was a professor and associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. She holds a doctorate in Latin American literature from the University of Miami, and she has received several literary awards, including the prestigious Cintas Fellowship. She has lived in the United States since 1959, when she left Cuba as an exile.

Her more recent works include “El reino de la infancia: Memorias de mi vida en cuba” (Miami: Eriginal Books, 2021), “El crímen de Biltmore Way” (2020), and “The Miracle of Saint Lazarus: A Mystery Twenty Years in the Making” (Miami: Mango Publishing Group, 2019), and the bilingual edition of her novel “The Memory of Silence/ Memoria del silencio.” (2014).

The event is sponsored by the Dean’s Academic Speakers Program; the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures; and Sigma Delta Pi, National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society. 

-VMI-