Ruth Behar

Ruth Behar (RuthBehar.com), the Newbery Honor Award-winning and Pura Belpré Award-winning author of Lucky Broken Girl, Letters from Cuba, and Across So Many Seas, was born in Havana, Cuba, grew up in New York, and has lived in Spain and Mexico. Her work also includes the Sephardic picture book, Tía Fortuna's New Home, poetry, memoir, and the acclaimed travel books, An Island Called Home and Traveling Heavy, as well as the joyous picture book, Pepita Meets Bebita, co-authored with her son, Gabriel Frye-Behar. She was the first Latina to win a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, and other honors include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and being named a "Great Immigrant" by the Carnegie Corporation. An anthropology professor at the University of Michigan, she lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.