Barbara Mujica
Bárbara Mujica is a novelist, short story writer, essayist and critic. Frida, her latest novel, is based on the tumultuous relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and the rivalry between Frida and her sister Cristina for Diego’s affection.
A Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University, Mujica is a specialist in Early Modern Spanish literature and Latin American culture who has written extensively on Spanish literature, mysticism, the pastoral novel, and seventeenth-century theater, and her articles have appeared in many academic journals. She is also director of El Retablo, Georgetown University’s Spanish-language theater group.
Other book-length fiction includes The Deaths of Don Bernardo (novel, 1990), Sanchez across the Street (stories, 1997), Far from My Mother’s Home which is currently being translated into French (stories, 1999), and Affirmative Actions! (2000). Appearing in numerous magazines including The Minnesota Review, Pangolin Papers, and The Literary Review, and anthologies such as Where Angels Glide at Dawn, eds. Lori Carlson and Cynthia Ventura, Intro. Isabel Allende (1990, 1993), What Is Secret: Stories by Chilean Women, ed. Marjorie Agosín (1995), Two Worlds Walking, ed. C. W. Truesdale and Diana Glancy (1994), and The House of Memory, ed. Marjorie Agosín (1999), Dr. Mujica’s short stories have been nominated for numerous awards and prizes.
In 1998 Dr. Mujica won the Pangolin Prize for Best Short Story of the Year and in 1992 the E. L. Doctorow International Fiction Competition. She has also won grants and awards from Poets and Writers of New York, the Spanish Government, and other institutions. She is a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize for Fiction. Mujica’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Dallas Morning Star, and hundreds of other publications. In 1990 her essay “Bilingualism’s Goal” was named one of the best 50 op-eds of the decade by The New York Times. Her latest non-fiction works are Hispanomundo, an overview of Latin American culture which has been classroom tested extensively in her Colloquium on Hispanic Society, scheduled for publication in 2001 by Harcourt Brace, and Sophia’s Daughters: Women Writers of Early Modern Spain, scheduled for publication in 2002 by Yale University Press.
In addition, she has written Et in Arcadia Ego: Essays on Death in the Pastoral Novel (1990, co-authored with Bruno Damiani), Iberian Pastoral Characters (1986), and Calderon’s Characters: An Existential Point of View (1980). She has edited El texto puesto en escena: Estudios sobre la comedia en honor a Everett W. Hesse (2000, with Anita Stoll; published with a full grant from the Association of Hispanic Classical Theater), Looking at the Comedia in the Year of the Quincentennial (1993, with Sharon Voros), and Texto y espectáculo (1989). She also edited Comedia Studies at the End of the Century, a special issue of the journal Hispania (Sept. 1999).
Mujica has also published eight anthologies of Spanish and Spanish American literature: Milenio: Milaños de literatura española (2001), Antología de la literatura española: Siglos XVIII y XIX (1999), Premio Nóbel: Once grandes escritores del mundo hispánico (1997), Texto y vida: Introducción a la literatura hispanoamericana (1992), Antología de la literatura española: Edad Media (1991), Antología de la literatura española: Renacimiento y Siglo de Oro (1991), Texto y vida: Introducción a la literatura española (1990), and Readings in Spanish Literature (1975). Her anthologies have been published by Georgetown University Press, Oxford University Press, John Wiley & Sons, and Harcourt College Publishing. Her articles have appeared in many scholarly journals and collections. She has also published numerous language books, the most recent being El próximo paso, published by Harcourt in 1996.
As book review editor of Américas, the cultural magazine of the Organization of American States, Dr. Mujica regularly reviews new books from Latin America and interviews Latin American authors. Over 130 of her reviews and interviews were published in Books of the Américas: Reviews and Interviews from Américas Magazine, 1990-1995 (1997). A second collection, covering the years 1996-2000 was published in 2001. Mujica’s articles on Hispanic culture and language have appeared in hundreds of major newspapers and magazines.
Dr. Mujica is a member of the editorial boards of Bulletin of the Comediantes and Hispania. She has lectured widely on Golden Age theater in the United States and abroad. In March 2000 she was Master of Ceremonies and Discussant at the Golden Age Theater Festival in El Paso, Texas.
