Ivonne Lamazares was born in Cuba in 1962. Her mother died when she was three, & she was raised by her grandparents in Old Havana. She emigrated to Florida at the age of fourteen & currently lives in South Miami with her husband, the poet Steve Kronen, & her daughter. Lamazares is on the faculty of Miami-Dade Community College, where she received an endowed chair for excellence in teaching literature, & her short stories have appeared in "Blue Mesa Review" & "Michigan Quarterly Review." Lamazares was discovered at the Sewanee Writers' Conference when she had written little more than the beginning of "The Sugar Island." Her teachers were so taken with her work that they introduced her to an… agent, & soon after, she signed a book contract. About the sudden attention her writing has received, she says, "I still can't explain this. It's like being in a car that's out of control, going somewhere you never expected to go." She lives in South Miami, Florida.