Barbara Mujica

Barbara Mujica is a professor of Spanish literature at Georgetown University and a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Her latest novel, I Am Venus (Overlook Press), explores the identity of the model for Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus, the painter’s only extant female nude. Her previous fiction includes the international bestseller Frida, based on the relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and Sister Teresa, which was adapted for the stage at The Actors Studio in Los Angeles. The play opened in November 2013. Mujica has won numerous prizes for her stories, including first prize in the 2015 Maryland Writers’ Association national fiction competition. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and hundreds of other publications. Since her son, a U.S. Marine, returned from Iraq in 2008, Mujica has devoted much of her energy to serving veterans. In 2015, she received a Presidential Medal from Georgetown University for her work in this area. Mujica’s latest scholarly books are A New Anthology of Early Modern Spanish Theater: Play and Playtext (Yale, 2014), Shakespeare and the Spanish Comedia (Bucknell 2013), Teresa de Avila, Lettered Woman, (Vanderbilt 2009), and Women Writers of Early Modern Spain: Sophia’s Daughters (Yale, 2004).