Marie Arana

Biography

Marie Arana is Writer at Large for the Washington Post and Senior Consultant to the Librarian of Congress. She is the author of the memoir American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood (Dial, 2001), a finalist for the National Book Award; the novels Cellophane (Dial, 2006) and Lima Nights (Dial, 2009); and The Writing Life: Writers On How They Think and Work (PublicAffairs, 2002). Her newest book is a biography, Bolivar: American Liberator, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2013. Arana has been an executive editor at two major publishing houses and sits on the boards of a number of cultural institutions, including VQR. She has been a judge for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

See Work

REPORTING / Fall 2012

Dreaming of El Dorado

By Marie Arana ,  Photography by Gina Nemirofsky

Senna has pounded rock; she has ground it to gravel with her feet, she has teetered under heavy bags of crushed stone. But she was never lucky as a child miner; she never found even the faintest glimmer of gold. Today, with her father dead...

The approach to La Rinconada, a gold-mining town nestled under a glacier in the Peruvian Andes.
EDITOR'S DESK / Fall 2012

The Female Conscience

By Marie Arana

What does it mean to have a female conscience? Although it’s hard to put a finger on it, we recognize it in the people around us.