Sonia Rivera-Valdés is a writer, literary and film critic and a professor of Spanish Language and Literature at York College. She was born in Cuba, and now lives in New York. In January of 1997, she won the Casa de Las Américas literary prize, one of the most prestigious awards in Latin American, with Las historias prohibidas de Marta Veneranda, a short story book about the intimate lives of Latino immigrants in New York. Her second book, Historias de mujeres grandes y chiquitas, was published by Editorial Campana, New York, in 2003. The translation of this book to English, Stories of Little Women and Grown Up Girls, will be published by Ed. Campana by the end of 2006. Sonia's articles and stories ha ve been extensively published in anthologies and literary magazines in the United States and other countries.