Julia Alvarez, author of The Cemetery Of Untold Stories

Julia Alvarez is one of America’s most acclaimed and best-loved fiction writers and poets. Her novels about the Dominican and Dominican-American experiences have not only inspired new generations of Latinx authors, they have also helped to enlarge the map of world literature. Her magical new novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories (April 2024), explores what happens to stories that are left unfinished.

Her 1991 novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, was named one of “21 new classics for the 21st century” by Library Journal. Her 1994 novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, was selected for “The Big Read” by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2013, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts and, in 2021, Mattel unveiled a Barbie doll in her honor.

Born in New York City, Julia Alvarez’s parents returned to their native country, Dominican Republic, shortly after her birth.  Ten years later, the family was forced to flee to the United States because of her father’s involvement in a plot to overthrow the dictator Trujillo.

Alvarez has written novels (How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, ¡Yo!, In the Name of Salomé, Saving the World, Afterlife), collections of poems (Homecoming, The Other Side/ El Otro Lado, The Woman I Kept to Myself), nonfiction (Something to Declare, Once Upon A Quinceañera, and A Wedding in Haiti), and numerous books for young readers (including the Tía Lola Stories series, Before We Were Free, finding miracles, Return to Sender and Where Do They Go?).

Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Department of Latin America, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies, and the Writing & Critical Inquiry (WCI) Program.