Faculty


Magda Bogin
Director

New York-based Magda Bogin is a novelist, translator and journalist who has taught in the graduate writing programs of Columbia, Princeton and City College and, most recently, in Mexico. She is the author of Natalya, God's Messenger (Scribner) and has published numerous translations, including Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Fluent in Spanish, English and French, she is the founder and director of Under the Volcano International.

Find out more about Magda Bogin


Teresa Bello
Site Coordinator

Teresa Bello was born in Tepoztlán, where she and her husband Pedro, a retired schoolteacher, have a stationery store and a small crafts stall. She is something of a local celebrity, working with many grass roots organizations and always ready to help where help is needed. She and her family provide invaluable logistical support to Under the Volcano and serve as the guides for our group climb to the pyramid atop the Tepozteco.


Ruth Behar

Ruth Behar was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in New York City. A cultural anthropologist by training, she has worked in Spain, Mexico, and Cuba, and is well known for her books, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story, and The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Her recent book, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba, is a blend of memoir, ethnography, and photography that tells the story of her quest to get to know the Jewish community that remains on the island she left as a child.

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Sandra Cisneros

Widely accepted as a defining voice of Chicana literary culture, Sandra Cisneros's work is required reading in schools and colleges throughout the US, and enjoys international acclaim. Her fiction includes The House on Mango Street (1984) and Woman Hollering Creek (1991), a collection of short stories. Her most recent novel, Caramelo, the fruit of her years as a MacArthur fellow, appeared in 2002. Speaking about her work, she says: "I mean to raise hell, and I think my stories do."

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Lourdes Portillo

Award-winning writer / director / producer Lourdes Portillo's films focus on the search for a new documentary language. Her first film was internationally praised After the Earthquake/Despues del Terremoto, about a Nicaraguan refugee living in San Francisco. In 1985 The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, made in collaboration with Susana Muñoz, was nominated for Best Documentary in the Academy Awards. Portillo has collaborated extensively with many artists, among them editor Vivien Hillgrove and cinematographers Kyle Kibbe and Jose Araujo. Her work has merited over 40 international prizes and three retrospectives.

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RECENT FACULTY

Russell Banks
Breyten Breytenbach
Carolyn Forché
Jessica Hagedorn
Joyce Johnson
Pura López Colomé
Grace Paley
Tomás Segovia
Juan Tovar
Chuck Wachtel

RECENT GUEST READERS & PRESENTERS

Jean Franco
Salvador Guzmán
Edith Lara
Robert Nichols
Alberto Palacios
Mark Probst

Questions?
info@underthevolcano.org