Bolivar (Arana) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1949
• Where—Peru
• Raised—United States
• Education—B.A., Northwestern University; M.A., Hong
   Kong University: certificate of scholarship, Yale
   University
• Currently—lives in Washington D.C.


Marie Arana is an author, editor, journalist, and member of the Scholars Council at the Library of Congress.

Arana was born in Peru, the daughter of Jorge Arana, a Peruvian born civil engineer, and Marie Campbell Arana, she moved with her family to the United States at the age of 9, achieved her B.A. in Russian at Northwestern University, her M.A. in linguistics at Hong Kong University, a certificate of scholarship at Yale University in China, and began her career in book publishing, where she was vice president and senior editor at Harcourt Brace and Simon & Schuster.

For more than a decade she was the editor in chief of "Book World", the book review section of The Washington Post, during which time she instituted the partnership of The Washington Post with the White House (First Lady Laura Bush) and the Library of Congress (Dr. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress) in hosting the annual National Book Festival on the Washington Mall. She currently sits on the board of the National Book Festival. Arana is a Writer at Large for The Washington Post. She is married to Jonathan Yardley, the Post's chief book critic, and has two children from a previous marriage, Lalo Walsh and Adam Ward.

Marie Arana is the author of a memoir about a bicultural childhood American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood (finalist for the 2001 National Book Award as well as the Martha PEN/Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir); editor of a collection of Washington Post essays about the writer's craft, The Writing Life (2002); and the author of Cellophane (a satirical novel set in the Peruvian Amazon, published in 2006, and a finalist for the John Sargent Prize). Her most recent novel, published in January 2009, is Lima Nights. She has written the introductions for many books, among them a National Geographic book of aerial photographs of South America, Through the Eyes of the Condor. Her biography of Venezuelan military and political leader, Simon Bolivar—Bolivar: American Liberator—was published in 2013.

Arana has served on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. For many years, she has directed literary events for the Americartes Festivals at the Kennedy Center. She has been a judge for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award as well as for the National Book Critics Circle. Her commentary has been published in USA Today, Smithsonian magazine, National Geographic, and numerous other literary publications throughout the Americas.

Arana was an Invited Research Scholar at Brown University in 2008-2009. In October 2009, Arana received the Alumnae Award of the Year at Northwestern University.

In April 2009, Arana was named John W. Kluge Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress through 2010. In September 2009, she was elected to the Scholars' Council of the Library of Congress as well as the Board of Directors of the National Book Festival. She is currently Senior Consultant to the Librarian of Congress.  (From Wikipedia.)