Word Up Community Bookshop / LIbrería Comunitaria and Dominican Writers Association present a screening of PBS American Masters’s Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined. Please register in advance.

The Dominican-American poet and novelist Julia Alvarez burst onto the literary scene and blazed a trail for a generation of Latino authors .  Her semi-autobiographical novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, was published in 1991, followed in 1994 by In the Time of the Butterflies, which sold over a million copies and raised global awareness about life under Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Alvarez’s work includes three nonfiction books, 3 poetry collections, 11 books for children and young adults and 7 literary novels. This new documentary opens a window into her extraordinary journey from an idyllic, privileged childhood in the Dominican Republic to a life of exile in New York City to a brilliant literary career that shows no sign of slowing down. At 74, she recently published the critically acclaimed novel The Cemetery of Untold Stories.

Filmed in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic, it features extensive interviews with Alvarez, her family, and her literary contemporaries. Produced and directed by Adriana Bosch,  award-winning documentary filmmaker who served as series producer on the PBS series Latino Americans (2013) and Latin Music USA (2009).