Achy Obejas

Achy Obejas is an accomplished poet, novelist, journalist, professor, and translator. She was born in Havana and after the Cuban Revolution, came to the US at the age of 6 with her parents. She grew up in the Midwest, and studied journalism at Indiana University, Bloomington, before earning an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She has developed writing workshops, taught writing classes, and lectured at many colleges and universities.

Obejas is the recipient of a USA Ford Fellowship in 2014 for literature and translation, a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellowship, a team Pulitzer Prize for the series “Gateway to Gridlock” while at the Chicago Tribune, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry, the Studs Terkel Journalism Award, and a Cintas Foundation Fellowship. She currently serves as the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College in Oakland, CA, where she lives with her wife, Megan Bayles, and their son Ilan. In 2016 Mills College debuted its Low Residency MFA in Translation, a program that Obejas conceived and co-directs.