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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Monday, May 24
Poet, novelist and essayist Julia Alvarez was born in New York of Dominican descent. She spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father’s involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.
Alvarez rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies and ¡Yo!. Her publications as a poet include The Housekeeping Book and The Woman I Kept to Myself, and as an essayist the autobiographical compilation Something to Declare. In addition to her successful writing career, Julia Alvarez is the current writer-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. | 
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| Julia Alvarez
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Wednesday, May 26  | Born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother’s expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist.
She chose to write fiction instead. Her novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter and Saving Fish from Drowning, all New York Times bestsellers and the recipient of various awards. She is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, and two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat. | | Amy Tan
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