American novelist, short story writer and critic. Her latest novels are Sister Teresa (2007), based on the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, and Frida, (2001) based on the life of Frida Kahlo. The latter was an international bestseller that was translated into seventeen languages. Barbara Mujica’s other book-length fiction includes The Deaths of Don Bernardo (novel, 1990), Sanchez across the Street (stories, 1997) and Far from My Mother’s Home (stories, 1999). Barbara Mujica’s short stories have appeared 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 Cnythia 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). Her 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. Mujica has won several awards for her writing: the Trailblazers Award from Dialogue on Diversity (2004), the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award (2002), the Pangolin Prize (1998), the E. L. Doctorow International Fiction Competition (1992). 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. A Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University, she has written numerous scholarly books and articles. The latest books are Lettered Women: The Correspondence of Teresa de Avila (Vanderbilt University Press, forthcoming), Espiritualidad y feminismo: Santa Teresa de Jesus,(Ediciones del Orto, 2007), and Women Writers of Early Modern Spain: Sophia's Daughters (Yale University Press, 2004).
“I know what you want to hear, doctor, but I'm sorry, you're not going to pry some sordid confession out of me.”