Alma Guillermoprieto, Noted Colombian Scholar, to Speak as Part of University’s Tinker Foundation Lecture Series on September 30

Lecture will address the collective effort to build an online altar to commemorate 72 migrants assassinated during their attempt to cross the México/US border in August 2010

Alma Guillermoprieto, an award-winning author, scholar, journalist, and speaker

Alma Guillermoprieto, an award-winning author, scholar, journalist, and speaker, will speak at William Paterson University on Tuesday, September 30 as part of the University’s Tinker Foundation Latin American Studies Lecture Series.  Her lecture will address the collective effort to build an online altar to commemorate 72 migrants assassinated during their attempt to cross the México/US border in August 2010.

The program, “Building an Online Altar: The 72migrantes.com Project,” will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in the Cheng Library Auditorium. The event is open to the public. Admission is free.

A native of Mexico, Guillermoprieto writes frequently for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and National Geographic Magazine.  She began her reporting career in 1978, covering the conflict in Central America for The Guardian, and subsequently for The Washington Post. She has received many honors including the 1992 Latin American Studies Association Media Award, a 1995 MacArthur Fellowship, and a 2000 George Polk Award for foreign reporting. At Harvard University she has been a Nieman Fellow, a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and the first Senior Fellow at the Center for the Humanities. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences College.

Her first book, Samba, was nominated for the 1990 National Book Critics Circle award. Two subsequent collections of her essays for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, The Heart that Bleeds and Looking for History, are now considered classic accounts of Latin America during an era of turmoil and change. Her most recent book, Dancing with Cuba, is an account of the time she spent teaching modern dance in Havana, during a crucial year for the Cuban revolution. Currently a visiting professor at Princeton, she lives in Bogota, Colombia.

The Tinker Foundation promotes the development of an equitable, sustainable and productive society in Latin America and seeks to enhance understanding in the U.S. of Latin America and how U.S. policies may impact the region.

For additional information, contact Rosa Soto, associate professor and director of Latin American and Latino Studies at William Paterson University at 973-720-3069 or sotor@wpunj.edu.