African Passions (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Beatriz Rivera was born on September 27, 1957, in Havana, Cuba, but at the age of three, she immigrated to the United States (soon after Castro’s rise to power) with her parents, Mario Lorenzo and Aida (Rufin) Rivera. She lived with her family in Miami, Florida, until her high school years, when her parents sent her to Switzerland to complete her early education.

When it was time to go to college, Rivera chose to live in France, where she attended the Sorbonne, majoring in philosophy and eventually receiving her master’s degree in 1979. Upon graduation, Rivera decided that she was not yet ready to return to the United States, so she found a job teaching English and Spanish in French schools. It was during this period that she also began writing her first novel.

Rivera lived in Paris for ten years, believing that she would never return to the United States. However, she reached a point in her life when she realized that as a writer she did not have a clear identity — she wasn’t French, although she was living in France; she didn’t really relate to being an American, although America was where she had spent much of her early years; and, although her ancestry was Cuban, she had left Cuba at such a young age that she didn’t really associate herself with that country either. In the end, she decided to reestablish herself in the United States.

Upon her return to the United States, two of Rivera’s short stories were published. “Paloma” appeared in The Americas Review and “Life Insurance” was published in Chiricu. Three years later, in 1995, both of these stories, along with the titled short story, were later collected in African Passions and Other Stories, Rivera’s first book-length publication. Rivera followed this book with the novel Midnight Sandwiches at the Mariposa Express (1997) and the novel Playing with Light (2000).

Besides her creative writing endeavors, Rivera has also worked as a reporter for the Jersey Journal in Jersey City, New Jersey, and as a newspaper correspondent for the Daily Freeman in Kingston, New York. She has also taught at Fordham University and at Borough Manhattan Community College, both in New York City. In 1996, she enrolled in a Ph.D. program at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, majoring in Spanish literature.

On June 21, 1988, she married Charles S. C. Barnes, with whom she has two children. She currently lives in the Hudson Valley region of New York.