Blog

Rosario Ferré

May 30, 2019

Rosario Ferré was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1938. Her first book, Papeles de Pandora, turned her into one of the best-known writers of Latin America. She has published poems, short stories, novels, essays and children’s literature. Her novels Maldito Amor (1987), La batalla de las vírgenes (1993), The House on the Lagoon (1997), Eccentric Neighborhoods (1998) and Flight of the Swan (2001), among others, address issues related to the history of the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie. Starting from her novel The House on the Lagoon (1995), which was a finalist for the National Book Awards, Ferré continued to write her narrative in English, a controversial decision, given that the Spanish language has become a cultural stronghold of the political left in the island. Doctor Ferré was a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and was also conferred an honorary doctorate from Brown University. She was a visiting professor at Rutgers University and at Johns Hopkins University and won the “Liberatur Prix”, the Frankfrut Book Fair Prize in 1992. Rosario Ferré passed away in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2016.