The Center for the Humanities in an Urban Environment is pleased to announce our second Public Zoom Lecture: "Castle of the Stranger." 

On Monday, April 20, we will host Ana Menendez via Zoom at 1 p.m. EST. Join the webinar:  https://fiu.zoom.us/j/505720033

When her tenant abruptly dies, the narrator of Ana Menéndez’s new novel turns to neighbors in her South Beach apartment block for details about his life. Instead of answers, she discovers only more stories of loss and alienation. Ana will read from the new, unpublished work and discuss the fragmentary form, the meaning of community, and how we care and don’t for those closest to us.

Ana Menéndez has published four books of fiction: Adios, Happy Homeland!, The Last War, Loving Che and In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, whose title story won a Pushcart Prize. She has worked as a journalist in the United States and abroad, lastly as a prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald. As a reporter, she wrote about Cuba, Haiti, Kashmir, Afghanistan and India. Her work has appeared in publications including Vogue, Bomb Magazine, The New York Times and Tin House and has been included in several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. She has a B.A. in English from Florida International University and an M.F.A. from New York University. A former Fulbright Scholar in Egypt, she has also lived in India, Turkey and The Netherlands, where she designed a creative writing minor at Maastricht University. She is now a program director with Academic Affairs at FIU.