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TITLE: Marie Arana delivers the 2008 Hispanic Heritage Month keynote address
SPEAKER: Marie Arana
EVENT DATE: 09/18/2008
RUNNING TIME: 62 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, editor and author Marie Arana delivered the keynote address for the Library's celebration. This year's celebration, which runs from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, had a theme of "Getting Involved: Our Families, Our Community, Our Nation."
Speaker Biography: Marie Arana is the author of "American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood," a memoir of growing up between Peru and the United States. A finalist for the 2001 National Book Award and the PEN-Memoir Award, "American Chica" was chosen as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and the American Library Association. It was also the winner of the 2001 Books for a Better Life Award. Arana is also the editor of "The Writing Life," a collection of her popular column on writers, published every month in The Washington Post. Her novel "Cellophane," a saga set in the Amazon rainforest of Peru, was published July 2006, and was a finalist for the John Sargent Prize. It was named one of the best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Washington Post and Library Journal. Arana has written introductions for many books, the most recent of which was for Robert Haas's book of aerial photography of South America, "Through the Eyes of the Condor" (2007). Her newest book, "Lima Nights," will be published in January 2009. Arana is currently the book editor of The Washington Post. Before her tenure at The Post, she was a vice president for Simon & Schuster and a senior editor for Harcourt Brace Publishers. She has served on the boards of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Born in Lima, Peru, she came to the United States at the age of 10. She has a bachelor's degree in Russian language and literature from Northwestern University; a certificate of scholarship from Yale University in China for her work in Mandarin; and a master's degree in linguistics from Hong Kong University.
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SERIES: Hispanic Heritage Month