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Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez is a renowned author, born on March 27, 1950, in New York City. However, she spent the first ten years of her life in the Dominican Republic, before her family moved back to the United States in 1960 when she was ten years old. This experience of moving between two cultures would later become a significant theme in her work.

Alvarez has made substantial contributions to American literature, with a body of work that includes six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. Her writing is known for its exploration of the Latinx experience in the United States, and she has been recognized for her efforts with numerous awards. These include a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, and the Woman of the Year award from Latina magazine.

In addition to her writing, Alvarez has been an active teacher and mentor to other writers, working in schools and communities across America. She was a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College until her retirement in 2016. Her work has been widely recognized for its significance, including inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.”

One of Alvarez's most well-known works is "In the Time of the Butterflies," a novel that has sold over one million copies and was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program. In 2013, Alvarez was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.
Tia Lola Stories Books
# Title Year
1 How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay 2001
2 How Tia Lola Learned to Teach 2010
3 How Tia Lola Saved the Summer 2011
4 How Tia Lola Ended Up Starting Over 2011
Standalone Novels
# Title Year
1 How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents 1991
2 In the Time of the Butterflies 1994
3 Yo! 1997
4 In the Name of Salome 2000
5 The Secret Footprints 2000
6 Before We Were Free 2002
7 Finding Miracles 2004
8 Saving the World 2006
9 Return to Sender 2009
10 Afterlife 2020
11 The Cemetery of Untold Stories 2024
Collections
# Title Year
1 Homecoming 1984
2 The Woman I Kept to Myself 2004
3 Resistencia 2020
4 Makeshift Altar 2024
Chapbooks
# Title Year
1 A Cafecito Story 2001
Picture Books
# Title Year
1 A Gift of Gracias 2005
2 Where Do They Go? 2016
3 Already a Butterfly 2020
Non-Fiction Books
# Title Year
1 Something to Declare 1998
2 Once Upon a Quinceanera 2007
3 A Wedding in Haiti 2012
Mondo Books
# Title Year
1 Mondo Barbie 1993
2 Mondo Elvis 1994
3 Mondo Marilyn 1995
4 Mondo James Dean 1996
Julia Alvarez Anthologies
# Title Year
1 Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories 1992
2 Mondo Barbie 1993
3 Growing Up Female: Stories By Women Writers From the American Mosaic 1993
4 Mondo Elvis 1994
5 Mondo Marilyn 1995
6 Mondo James Dean 1996
7 Mirror, Mirror on the Wall 1998
8 Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean 2003
9 The Future Dictionary of America 2004
10 Been There, Done That 2015
11 Tales of Two Americas 2017
12 Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation 2017
13 Freeman's Power 2018
14 Why I Like This Story 2019
15 What Saves Us 2019