Marie Arana Changes Perceptions, One Story at a Time
From the very beginning, words have been important to Marie Arana.
The Peruvian American’s childhood was filled with music and literature, which formed her passion for storytelling and books as she navigated growing up in a bicultural household. Having an American mother, Arana learned to provide a counter narrative to Peruvian perceptions of Americans.
Her love of books and writing grew into a literary career: books editor for the Washington Post, the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress, literary director for the National Book Festival, and champion for editors and writers alike.
And today, her counter narrative is focused on sharing the history and stories of who Latinos are through books like Silver, Sword, and Stone, and the recently released LatinoLand.
Arana knows that to reach the hearts and minds of all audiences, all you need is a good story.
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About Our Guest
Marie Arana is the prizewinning author of “LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority.” Among her numerous books are the National Book Award Finalist “American Chica,” the novels “Cellophane” and “Lima Nights,” the biography “Bolívar: American Liberator” (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) and a sweeping history of Latin America “Silver, Sword, and Stone,” which the American Library Association named the best nonfiction book of 2019.
Winner of the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature in 2020, Marie has been a former executive at two major publishing houses, a judge for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, a Latin America columnist for the New York Times, a television commentator on books and publishing, and editor in chief of Book World at the Washington Post. She is also the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress. She currently serves on the boards of PEN America, PEN/Faulkner, the Authors Guild, the American Writers Museum, the Amazon Conservation Association, and the Library of Congress’s Madison Council; and she has also served on the advisory council of the United States Southern Command.
In 2024, at an awards ceremony at the Organization of American States (OAS), she received the Distinguished Leadership for the Americas Award from the Inter-American Dialogue.
