
Author Irene Vilar. Photo by Gary Isaacs.
Author Irene Vilar will give a book reading and talk entitled “Unlucky Lucky Bodies: A Personal Account of Generational and National Trauma” on Thursday, October 6, 7:30-8:30 p.m., in English 001.
There will also be a Q&A session with Vilar on Thursday, October 6, 2:00-3:00p.m., in English 201.
Irene Vilar was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Her memoir The Ladies’ Gallery (Other Press, 2009, originally published in 1996) was a Philadelphia Inquirer and Detroit Free Press notable book of the year. Her latest memoir, Impossible Motherhood (Other Press, 2009), has been translated into many languages, is a bestseller in Italy, and won the 2010 IPPY gold medal for best memoir/autobiography. She is series editor of The Americas at Texas Tech University Press and a Guggenheim Fellow. Vilar is literary agent for Vilar Creative Agency, and co-agent in the U.S. for Ray-Gude Mertin Literary Agency, an agency specializing in Spanish, Latin American, and Portuguese authors.
These events are co-sponsored by the Comparative Literature Program, the Creative Writing Program, and the Department of English.
More information on the writer and her books can be found on her website.
Praise for Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict
“Impossible Motherhood is like a journey into a harrowing underworld but guided by Vilar’s gifts and her light we emerge in the end transformed, enlightened, and oh so alive.” -Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“Vilar does exactly what the best memoirists do: She tells us the truth about everything, even when the truth utterly confounds… Unsettling and complex and ultimately redemptive.” -The Oregonian
“An extraordinary memoir… [Vilar's] brutal honesty is haunting.” -Sunday Independent
Praise for The Ladies’ Gallery: A Memoir of Family Secrets
“Irene Vilar is a writer of extraordinary passion, erudition, and intelligence.” -Tobias Wolff
“Startling, raw, and affecting, a painful exercise in which memoir as therapy becomes memoir as art.” -Philadelphia Inquirer
“This memoir introduces us to a writer bound to make an impact… An autobiography as fantastic as any novel.” -Boston Globe