About the Author

JULIA ALVAREZ is the author of numerous books for adults including Return to Sender, In the Time of the Butterflies, and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, which was picked by New York librarians as one of 21 classic for the 21st century. She is also an accomplished writer of children's books including The Tia Lola Stories and Before We Were Free, which was an ALA Best Book of 2002 and winner of ALA's Pura Belpre Award. She is Writer in Residence at Middlebury College, and co-founder with Bill Eichner of Alta Gracia, a sustainable coffee farm and literacy center in the Dominican Republic.  And she is a founding member of Border of Lights, an ongoing movement to promote peace and collaboration between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. She lives in Vermont.