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Dr. Rivera-Valdés receives Presidential Outstanding Scholarship

Dr. Sonia Rivera-Valdés from the Foreign Languages/ESL/Humanities Department was a recipient of the Presidential Outstanding Scholarship that was announced and presented by the President during Fall 2009 Convocation.

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.

For the past twenty-six years Sonia has worked to promote Cuban and Latin American Culture in the United States, as well as establishing cultural links between Latin America and the United States. At  present she is the president of Latino Artists Round Table (LART), collaborates with the Tertulia de Escritoras Dominicanas in New York, and is a member of the Board of Directors of Dominican Studies Association.