Riesco, Laura (1940–)

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Riesco, Laura (1940–)

Laura Riesco is a Peruvian-born writer who lived in the United States after 1959. After studies in Michigan and Kentucky, Riesco taught Spanish-American literature at the University of Maine at Orono from 1969 until her retirement in 2005. Her experimental novel El truco de los ojos was published in 1978. Her second novel, Ximena de dos caminos (Ximena at the Crossroads), published in 1994, won many awards, including the designation "best novel of the year" in Peru and the 1995 Latino Literature Prize of the New York Latin American Writers' Institute. The novel is an innovative depiction of a Peruvian white middle-class child who examines the Indian and European cultures that surround her. Riesco has published literary articles and numerous short stories, many of which have been translated into English.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Riesco, Laura. El truco de los ojos. Lima: Editorial Milla Batres, 1978.

Riesco, Laura. Ximena de dos caminos. Lima: PEISA, 1994. Translated by Mary G. Berg as Ximena at the Crossroads. Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1998.

                                          Mary G. Berg