Judith Ortiz Cofer, born in Horminqueros, Puerto Rico, moved with her family to Augusta, Georgia, when she was fifteen. Her stories, poems, and personal essays explore the lives of young Puerto Ricans as they assimilate the native culture of their parents with their own adopted culture. In 1984, she joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, where she is now Regents and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing. Ortiz Cofer has published several books with UGA Press, beginning with her first major work of prose fiction, THE LINE OF THE SUN, in 1989 and, most recently the poetry collection A LOVE STORY BEGINNING IN SPANISH. Her other UGA Press publications include EL DELI LATINO, the Spanish translation of her collection of personal narrative, short fiction, and poetry The Latin Deli, and both the English and Spanish versions of her nonfiction account of the process of becoming a writer, WOMAN IN FRONT OF THE SUN and MUJER FRENTE EL SOL.
Philip Lee Williams was born and raised in Madison, Georgia, in 1950. He serves as the director of public information for UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, as well as an adjunct professor of creative writing at UGA. His first novel, THE HEART OF A DISTANT FOREST, won the Townsend Prize for Fiction in 1986 and was reprinted in paperback by UGA Press. Williams’s comic novel THE TRUE AND AUTHENTIC HISTORY OF JENNY DORSET(1997) and his memoir CROSSING WILDCAT RIDGE(1999) were also published by the Press. His most recent novel is The Campfire Boys, which released September 1.
Atlanta native Walter White(1893?-1955) served as chief secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) from 1929 to 1955 and was one of the most prominent and influential black leaders in the U.S. until mid-century. UGA Press has editions of his 1924 novel THE FIRE IN THE FLINT and his autobiography, A MAN CALLED WHITE, with a foreword by Andrew Young.
