Achy Obejas is one of the foremost contemporary Cuban-born women writers in the U.S. (along with Cristina García), as well as a two-time Lambda Literary Award winner for lesbian fiction.

Obejas was born in 1956 in Havana, Cuba, to José and Alicia Obejas. Her family left Cuba in 1963. Approximately a year and a half later, under a federal program to relocate Cuban immigrants to areas other than Miami, Obejas and her family went to Indiana, where she grew up. She received an M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College in 1993.

As well as a fiction writer, Obejas is also a journalist. For many years she wrote for the Chicago Tribune on cultural issues; in 2001 she was awarded a team Pulitzer Prize, as part o

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First published 14 November 2005 ; revised 13 June 2008

Citation: Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. "Achy Obejas". The Literary Encyclopedia. 14 November 2005.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=6010, accessed 9 February 2010.]