Mayra Santos-Febres, born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, is a novelist, poet, essayist, radio and television personality, and a professor in the humanities division of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. While still an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico, Ms. Santos-Febres was already an internationally published author, with her stories and articles appearing in such journals and newspapers as Casa de las Américas (Cuba), Página doce (Argentina), Revue Noir (France), and the Latin American Revue of Arts and Literature (New York City). In 1991, the same year she received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, her first two collections of poems were both critically acclaimed.
Sirena Selena vestida de pena (Spain: Grijalbo Mondadori, 2000) was Ms. Santos-Febres first novel. A finalist for the 2001 Rómulo Gallego’s Prize for the Novel, it won the PEN Club of Puerto Rico’s prize for best novel, and was subsequently translated into English and Italian. Her third novel, Nuestra Señora de las noche (Rayo/HarperCollins, 2008), placed as a finalist for the Premio Primavera Literary Award, and captured Puerto Rico’s 2007 Premio Nacional de Literatura.