Career
For more than a decade she was the editor in chief of "Book World", the book review section of The Washington Post , during which time she instituted the partnership of The Washington Post with First Lady Laura Bush and the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, in hosting the annual National Book Festival on the Washington Mall. Arana claimed to be the only Hispanic division head of the newspaper at this time. [2] for many years, directed all programming for the National Book Festival among numerous other programs at the Library. [3] and most recently has been the Literary Director of the Library of Congress. Arana is a Writer at Large for The Washington Post. She is married to Jonathan Yardley, the Post's former chief book critic, and has two children from a previous marriage and two stepchildren.
Arana is the author of a memoir about a bicultural childhood American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood (finalist for the 2001 National Book Award as well as the Martha PEN/Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir); editor of a collection of Washington Post essays about the writer's craft, The Writing Life (2002); and the author of Cellophane (a satirical novel set in the Peruvian Amazon, published in 2006, and a finalist for the John Sargent Prize). Her most recent novel, published in January 2009, is Lima Nights (its Spanish edition [2013] was selected by El Comercio's chief book critic as one of the best five novels of 2013 in Peru. In April, 2013, Simon & Schuster published her book Bolívar: American Liberator, a biography of the South American revolutionary leader and founder Simon Bolivar [4] [5] [6] It won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. [7] She has written introductions for many books, among them a National Geographic book of aerial photographs of South America, Through the Eyes of the Condor. and she is a frequent spokesperson on Hispanic issues, Latin America, and the book industry.
Arana is the Vice President of the 149-year-old Literary Society of Washington and a member of the Board of Trustees of PEN America. She is a member of the Advisory Board for SOUTHCOM, the U.S. Military Command for Central and South America. She has also served on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She is currently on the board of directors of the Authors Guild, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and the American Writers Museum. For many years, she has directed literary events for the International Festivals at the Kennedy Center. She has been a judge for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award as well as for the National Book Critics Circle. Her commentary has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Virginia Quarterly Review, [8] USA Today , Civilization , Smithsonian magazine, National Geographic , and numerous other literary publications throughout the Americas.
Arana was a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1996 and then again in 1999, an Invited Research Scholar at Brown University in 2008–2009. In October 2009, Arana received the Alumna Award of the Year at Northwestern University. [9]
In April 2009, Arana was named John W. Kluge Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress through 2010. In September 2009, she was elected to the Scholars' Council of the Library of Congress as well as the Board of Directors of the National Book Festival.
Arana was scriptwriter for the Latin American portion of the film "Girl Rising," which describes the life of Senna, a 14-year-old girl in the Andean gold-mining town of La Rinconada. At 17,000 feet above sea level, it is the highest human habitation in the world. The film was part of a campaign to promote the importance of girls' education. Arana's writing about that experience, which was published in The Best American Travel Writing 2013, was named one of "the most gripping and sobering" of the year.
In March 2015, Arana directed the Iberian Suite Festival Literary Series for the Kennedy Center. In the course of seven programs, she featured more than two dozen Spanish-language and Portuguese-language writers from around the world.
In October 2015, Arana was named Chair of the Cultures of the Countries of the South, an honorary post at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. She then became Literary Advisor to the Librarian of Congress as well as director of the National Book Festival.
In 2019, Simon & Schuster published her latest book, Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story (Orion Publishers released it in the United Kingdom). The Spanish edition of Bolívar: Libertador Americano was published the same year by Penguin Random House.
In October 2019, Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, named her Literary Director of the Library of Congress.
Bolivar and Silver, Sword and Stone have received accusations of hispanophobia, antiespañolismo, stereotyping, sectarianism and misinformation from those offended by Arana's stern criticism of Spain's colonial depredations of Latin America. [10] [11] [12]
In May 2020, Arana was awarded the 2020 Arts and Literature Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which cited her accumulated work as “vivid and elegantly argued writing about Latin America . . . that shows us the dire effects of countries that have not ceased to be colonized for hundreds of years. Arana’s treatment of these sustained attacks is compelling and undeniable.” [13]
In March 2021, the Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden conferred on her the Library of Congress Award for Superior Service.
Arana's third book LatinoLand was published on February 20th, 2024. [14] The Washington Post wrote that, "Her fragmented and beautifully written narrative, which washes over readers in a series of portraits, rather than as one continuous story, is a perfect representation of Latino diversity". [2] The New York Times noted that the book had a very fast pace as it covered an expansive history. [15]
