Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960, at the age of ten. She is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her novel In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts. In 2024, she was the subject of an American Masters documentary, “Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined," on PBS.

Photo Credit: Corey Hendrickson