Rosario Ferre is a writer and educator. She was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1938. Ferre attended Manhattanville College where she studied English literature. Ferre received a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. Upon graduation Ferre took up the cause of Puerto Rican independence. She began a teaching career as a professor of Latin American literature at the University of California, Berkeley, Rutgers University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Ferre began publishing the literary magazine, Loading and Unloading Zone. In 1977, Ferre published the first of her feminist manifestos,… Papeles de Pandora. Ferre's first book in English, The House on the Lagoon, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995. Ferr� was a Guggenheim fellowship recipient in 2004.