Achy Obejas

Achy Obejas was born in Havana, Cuba, and emigrated with her parents to the USA at age six, after after the Cuban revolution. She grew up in Michigan City, Indiana, and attended Indiana University. In 1979, she moved to Chicago, where she worked for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Reader. She has also written for The Windy City Times, The Advocate, High Performance, and The Village Voice. She became a cultural writer for the Chicago Tribune in 1991. She has also been a freelance entertainment writer. Her poetry has appeared in a number of journals, including Conditions, Revista Chicano-Rique, and The Beloit Poetry Journal. Her short stories have also been widely published in journals and anthologies. Her novels include We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (1994) and Memory Mambo (1996). The Cuba of her imagination has appeared throughout her works, and she revisited Cuba at age 39. She has served as a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Arts, and the University of Hawaii. She is the Sor Juana visiting writer at DePaul University, a position she has held since 2006. She also writes a blog called Citylife: Adventures in Urban Living for Chicago Public Media.