Cultivating the New American Canon

Ana Menéndez is the author of four books of fiction, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, which was a 2001 New York Times Notable book of the year and whose title story won a Pushcart Prize, Loving Che, The Last War, chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the top 100 books of the year, and Adios, Happy Homeland! Since 1991 Ana has worked as a journalist in the United States and abroad, most recently as a prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Vogue,Bomb Magazine, Poets & Writers and Gourmet Magazine and has been included in several anthologies, including Cubanisimo! and American Food Writing.

Chantel Acevedo is Associate Professor of English in the MFA Program of the University of Miami. Her novels include Love and Ghost Letters, which won the Latino International Book Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book of the Year, Song of the Red Cloak, a historical novel for young adults, and A Falling Star. Her latest novel, set in Cuba in 1963, during one of the deadliest hurricanes in recorded history, is The Distant Marvels (Europa Editions), an epic adventure tale, a family saga, a love story, a stunning historical account of armed struggle against oppressors, and a long tender plea for forgiveness.

Elmaz Abinader is a poet, memoirist, playwright and novelist. Her first memoir, Children of the Roojme, a Family’s Journey from Lebanon, chronicles three generations of immigrants battling dislocation and tradition. The poetry collection, In the Country of My Dreams…, won the 2000 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry award. She was also awarded a Goldies Award for Literature, as well as two Drammies (Oregon’s Drama award) for her three-act one-woman show, Country of Origin. Elmaz most recently performed Country of Origin at the Kennedy Center and has toured several countries. Elmaz’s work has been widely anthologized. She has been a Fulbright Senior Fellow to Egypt, taught for the Palestine Writing Workshop and a resident at the El Gouna Writing Residency on the Red Sea. Elmaz is one of the founders of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, (VONA/Voices), now in its fifteenth year, which provides workshops for writers of color. Her latest poetry collection, In This House, My Bones (Willow Books/Aquarius Press) draws on her and others’ experiences in Palestine, and from her meditation of the DNA of history and its shifts.

M. Evelina Galang is the author of Her Wild American Self; the novel One Tribe; and Angel de la Luna and the 5^th Glorious Mystery. She has also edited the anthology, Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. She is currently writing Lolas’ House: Women Living with War, stories of surviving Filipina WWII “Comfort Women” and is at work on a new novel, Beautiful Sorrow, Beautiful Sky. Galang teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami, is core faculty for VONA/Voices: Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, and has been named one of the 100 most influential Filipinas in the United States by Filipina Women’s Network.

Tananarive Due is a former Cosby Chair in the Humanities at Spelman College (2012-2014), where she taught screenwriting, creative writing and journalism.  She also teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. The American Book Award-winner and NAACP Image Award recipient is the author of twelve novels and a civil rights memoir.  In 2010, she was inducted into the Medill School of Journalism's Hall of Achievement at Northwestern University. Due’s story collection, Ghost Summer (Prime Books), takes readers to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness.