Teresa Dovalpage

I was born in Havana, Cuba, and left the island in 1996. I’ve been writing since I was a teenager. My first published novel, A Girl like Che Guevara (Soho Press, 2004), was written in English, a language that I didn’t start speaking daily until I was thirty years old. I hope this inspires my second-language students to never give up! (I am currently the ESL and Spanish professor at New Mexico Junior College.) I have a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of New Mexico and have been an educator for over thirty years. My other novels are Posesas de La Habana (Haunted ladies of Havana, PurePlay Press, 2004), Muerte de un murciano en La Habana (Death of a Murcian in Havana, Anagrama, 2006, which was a runner-up for the Herralde Award in Spain, El difunto Fidel (The late Fidel, Renacimiento, 2011, that won the Rincon de la Victoria Award in Spain in 2009), Habanera, A Portrait of a Cuban Family (Floricanto Press, 2010), La Regenta en La Habana ( Edebe, Spain, 2012), Orfeo en el Caribe (Atmósfera Literaria, 2013) and El retorno de la expatriada (The return of the expat, Egales, Spain, 2014). I also wrote three collections of short stories: ¡Por culpa de Candela! (Floricanto Press, 2009), Llevarás Luto por Franco (Atmósfera Literaria, 2012), and The Astral Plane: Stories of Cuba, the Southwest and Beyond (University of New Orleans Press, 2012). My novellas Las Muertas de la West Mesa (The West Mesa Murders, based on a real event) and Death by Smartphone were published in serialized format by Taos News. In 2016 I tried my hand at mysteries. Death Comes in through the Kitchen (Soho Crime, 2018) features Padrino, a santero-detective. The best thing about writing this novel was coming up with the recipes—it includes real, true-and-tried Cuban recipes like caldosa, tocinillo, drunken salad, lobster enchilada and more. I made all of them before including them in the book! The problem was that I gained nine pounds in the process. I am back on the South Beach Diet to get rid of them.