The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Judith Ortiz Cofer was born in 1952 in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico and died in 2016. In 1954, she moved with her family to Paterson, New Jersey. Years later, after moving to Augusta, Georgia, she attended Augusta College, where she studied English. She completed an MA in English at Florida Atlantic University and studied at Oxford University for a summer. Ortiz Cofer taught at numerous institutions, including Broward County Community College, Palm Beach Community College, University of Miami at Coral Gables, the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, Macon College, and University of Georgia, where she was appointed a Regent's Professor and Franklin Professor of English and creative writing. She is the author of Latin Women Pray (Florida Arts Gazette Press, 1980); Among the Ancestors (1981); The Native Dancer (Lieb/Schott Publications, 1981); Peregrina (Riverstone Press, 1986), which won the Riverside International Chapbook Poetry Competition; Terms of Survival (Arte Público Press, 1987); Reaching for the Mainland (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1995); and A Love Story Beginning in Spanish (University of Georgia Press, 2005). In 1989, she published the critically acclaimed novel The Line of the Sun (University of Georgia Press) which was later translated and published by the University of Puerto Rico as La linea del sol (1996). Her memoir Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood (Arte Público Press, 1990) was awarded the PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation in Nonfiction and a Pushcart Prize. It was subsequently translated into Spanish as Bailando en silencio: Escenas de una niñez puertorriqueña (Arte Público Press, 1997). Ortiz Cofer later combined both prose and poetry in The Latin Deli (University of Georgia Press, 1993) to explore the experiences of Latino communities in the United States. Her collection of young adult short stories An Island Like You (Orchard Books, 1995) was awarded the Pura Belpré Medal. She is also the author of the young adult novel The Year of Our Revolution (Arte Público Press, 1998) and Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer (University of Georgia Press, 2000), which received an award from the Georgia Writers Association. Ortiz Cofer authored the children’s books Animal Jamboree: Latino Folktales (Arte Público Press, 2012), which was awarded the Pura Belpré Medal, and The Poet Upstairs (Arte Público Press, 2017). She was a grantee of the Witter Bynner Foundation, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Florida Fine Arts Council. Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2010.

Works Cited

“Judith Ortiz Cofer.” Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, https://www.georgiawritershalloffame.org/honorees/judith-ortiz-cofer.

“Judith Ortíz Cofer.” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poet/judith-ortizcofer#:~:text=Judith%20Ort%C3%ADz%20Cofer%20was%20born,Florida%20Atlantic%20University%20in%201977