Award-winning author, Josefina López, best known at the creator of the play Real Women Have Curves, which spawned the popular Sundance Film Festival award-winning film of the same title starring America Ferrera, Lupe Ontiveros and George Lopez, will appear in The Fourth Annual Idyllwild Authors Series presented by Eduardo Santiago & Pen Center USA on Sunday, July 13, 2014 at 3:00 p.m. at Café Aroma, 54750 North Circle Drive, Idyllwild, CA 92549.
Josefina López will be interviewed by the host of the author series, Eduardo Santiago, followed by a signing of her novel, Hungry Woman in Paris, about a young attractive woman living in Paris searching for meaning in her life, while exploring her emotional and sexual hungers. Admission is free. Books will be sold at the event. To learn more, please call the Idyllwild Author Series at
323-377-9730 and visit online at www.idyllwildauthors.com.
Hungry Woman in Paris is author Josefina López' first novel. The story is about a journalist and activist named Canela who believes passion is an essential ingredient in life, but lately it seems to be in short supply. Using the ticket meant for her honeymoon, Canela escapes from Los Angeles to Paris, where she impulsively enrolls in the city's most prestigious culinary institute. There, still haunted by her cousin Luna's death, she begins a wondrous journey against the backdrop of a storied city and amid the enticing aromas of purees, sauces and broths. Making some new - and surprising - friends, and letting haute cuisine reawaken her spiritual and sensual sides, Canela discovers just who she is and what she wants, to hopefully, once again savor the world around her.
Author Josefina López said: "My real life was the inspiration for, and creation of my novel, Hungry Woman in Paris, which my play Hungry Woman is based on. Since I was a little girl I wanted to go live in Paris. I think every writer and artist has that fantasy. So when I met my husband, who is French-American, and he asked me if I'd ever consider living in France I told him 'Yeah!' So we decided we were going to start a new life in France."
López continues: "I also went to Paris to take time off from my very unrewarding writing career in Hollywood and to have my second baby. While I was living in Paris I was studying French and I read a very funny book called A Year in La Merde (A year in sh*t), which was a British journalist's observation about the Parisians and the French. I wanted to write about my observations too. After I had my second child I enrolled in cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu. I told myself I wanted to go through the experience of going to cooking school so I could write about it. I also wanted to write about my experience being an immigrant all over again in France. I wanted to compare life in the U.S. versus France. I also wanted to tell the traditional American in France story with a Latina as a protagonist to bring another perspective to this genre. I wanted to present a delicious female fantasy that would excite Latinas and create a forum for discussion about female sexuality."
Josefina López (Playwright, Screenwriter, Founder and Artistic Director of CASA 0101 Theater, Producer) is best known for authoring the play and co-authoring the film Real Women Have Curves, a coming-of-age story about Ana, a first-generation Chicana torn between pursuing her college ambitions, a personal goal and securing employment, which is a family expectation. Along the way, Ana confronts a host of cultural assumptions about beauty, marriage and a woman's role in society. Although Real Women Have Curves is López' most recognized work it is only one of many literary and artistic works she has created since her artistic career began at 17.
Born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico to Catalina and Rosendo López, on March 19, 1969, Josefina López was five-years-old when she and her family immigrated to the United States and settled in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. She graduated in the first class from the Los Angeles High School for the Arts in 1987. López was undocumented for 13 years before she received Amnesty in 1987 and eventually became a U.S. Citizen in 1995.
López has been an activist and has been doing public speaking for over 20 years. She has lectured on various topics including Chicano Theater, Women's History Issues and Minority representation in Cinema at over 200 universities such as Yale, Darmouth, and University of Southern California. She also has a monthly column called "Ask A Wise Latina" in the Brooklyn and Boyle Newspaper. She has been the subject of countless television and radio interviews in which she has passionately discussed immigration issues and other controversial subjects concerning women and minorities.
López is the recipient of a number of other awards and accolades, including a formal recognition from U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer's 7th Annual "Women Making History" banquet in 1998; and a screenwriting fellowship from the California
Arts Council in 2001. She and Real Women Have Curves film co-author George LaVoo won the Humanitas Prize for Screenwriting in 2002. Other accolades López has received include: The Gabriel Garcia Marquez Award from Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn in 2003, the Artist-in-Residency grant from the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group for 2007, a grant from The California Endowment in 2013 and a 2014 Hispanic Lifestyle Women of Influence Award Winner.
In October of 2013 Josefina López executive produced the film, Detained in the Desert, an adaptation of her play of the same name, through her new production shingle, Real Women Have Curvesâ Studio. The film received its World Premiere screenings at TCL 6 Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman's Chinese Theatre and Mann's Chinese Theatre) as part of the 16th Annual Los Angeles Latino Film Festival. Since then the film has been screened in the 9th Annual Los Angeles International Women's Film Festival in Burbank, CA (2014, where it won Best Feature Film), the 21st Annual San Diego Latino Film Festival (2014), the 30th Annual Chicago Latino Film Festival (2014), the 11th Annual Reel Rasquache Art & Film Festival in Boyle Heights, CA (2014) and at Museum of Art and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (2014).
In June 2013 López appeared as the Commencement Address Keynote Speaker at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LACHSA) Graduation Exercises at
Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. At the same time, she started the
Lupe Ontiveros Memorial Scholarship in Theatre at LACHSA and bestowed the award upon the first winning recipient at the graduation ceremony.
Josefina López has had more than 80 productions of her plays throughout the United States. In addition, she also paints, writes poetry, performs and designs. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of CASA 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights, CA (founded in 2000). At CASA 0101 her commitment is to teach screenwriting and playwriting and nurture a new generation of Latino artists. López is actively working to create an Artist District in Boyle Heights where theater, arts and music can flourish and create opportunities for the many talented artists who reside in Boyle Heights or grew up in Boyle Heights and want to return to contribute.
López is developing the musical version of Real Women Have Curves for Broadway. Her first novel titled Hungry Woman in Paris came out in 2009. She wrote a play to protest SB1070 titled Detained in the Desert, which won her many awards and which she is turned into a film of the same name. She is working on numerous writing projects for the stage, screen and for print.
López' screenplays include: Immigrant Anthology (1993 - Feature for HBO), No Place Like Home (2000 - Feature for
New Line Cinema), Real Women Have Curves (1990 - Feature for Warner Bros; 2002 - co-written with George LaVoo as a Feature for HBO); ADD Me to the Party (2003 - Feature for Four Color Prods.), Loteria for Juarez (2003 - Feature for HBO), Baby Boom (2004 - Short Film for Chispas Prods.; admitted into Outfest); Lola Goes To Roma (2006 - Feature for Medusa); Ali Q. (2007 - Feature for Cinemalab); Once Upon A Quinceanera (2009 - Feature for SONY Studios); Tulip (2010 - On Spec), Foursome (2010 - On Spec with film director Gabriela Tagliavini) and The Tamale Lesson (2011 - Short film for USC Film School).
Her Television credits include: Culture Class Show (1993 - Variety and Sketch Comedy for Fox); In Living Color (1993 - Sit-Com for Warner Bros.); La Fiesta de Ha Ha (1994 - Variety & Sketch Comedy for UPN); The Chavez Family (1995 - Pilot for ABC); L.A. Arts High (1995 - Pilot for NBC); McArthur Park (2003 - Pilot for Showtime); El Nino (2004 - Segment for CBS); The Cleaning Lady (2004 - On Spec) and Las Quatro (2007 - Pilot for ABC Family).
As a playwright, Josefina López' canon of full-length plays includes: Real Women Have Curves (1992); Unconquered Spirits (1995); No Place Like Home (1999); Queen of the Rumba (2000); The Cleaning Lady (2009); Baby Boom (2005); When Nature Calls (2007); Boyle Heights (2008); Detained in the Desert (2008); Lola Goes To Roma (2011); Hungry Woman (2012); Fifty One Fifty (2012); Trío Los Machos (2012); and A Cat Named Mercy (2013).
Her One-Act Plays include: Simply Maria, or The American Dream (1996); Confessions of Women from East L.A. (1996); La Pinta (1998); Pastorala Baby (2006); Food For The Dead (2010); and The Gay Horse Whisperer (2012). López is also the Founder of P.M.S. (The Pinche Mentirosa Sisters), a sketch comedy group performing cutting edge sketches that challenge stereotypes of Latinas.
Published works include her first novel, Hungry Woman In Paris (2009), Grand Central Publishing; Real Women Have Curves and Other Plays (2011), WPR Books: Latino Insights; and Volume 2 of The Essential Latino Play Series: Detained in the Desert and Other Plays (2011), WPR Books: Latino Insights.
Josefina López is married to
Emmanuel Deleage, the Executive Director of CASA 0101 Theater. The couple lives in Silver Lake, CA with their two sons, Etienne and Sebastian. To learn more about Josefina López, please visit
www.josefinalopez.co,
www.hungrywomaninparis.com and
www.casa0101.org.
"I too have a dream that one day women will be judged by the content of their character, their creative and intellectual contributions to society, rather than by the color of their hair, the size of their waist or the perkiness of their breasts." - Josefina López
Eduardo Santiago, founder and host of the Idyllwild Authors Series is an avid reader who nurtured his dream of writing his own novels by taking creative writing courses and writing at night and on weekends. He completed his first novel, Tomorrow They Will Kiss in 2004. The book promptly sold to Little, Brown, and Co. and was published in 2006. Tomorrow They Will Kiss went on to win several awards including Best Historical Novel and Best First Book honors at the International Latino Book Awards.
His follow up novel, Midnight Rumba, published in 2013, won Best Fiction award at the New England Book Festival, the
Beverly Hills Book Award, and the Latino International Book Award for Best Historical Novel 2013. Having lived his dream of becoming a published novelist of note, Santiago nurtures aspiring writers by teaching at UCLA Extension's Writing Program. And he celebrates writers and the written word by curating and hosting the Idyllwild Authors Series, which he founded in 2011. He is the recipient of PEN Center USA's Emerging Voices (2004) and The Mark (2009).
The Idyllwild Authors Series is a yearly event hosted by Eduardo Santiago at Idyllwild's Café Aroma. For 10 consecutive Sundays, Santiago interviews writers of note about their craft, inspiration, and in particular, their books. Books are also sold at the event, which is one of the most popular on "the hill." Over the years the series has featured New York Times Best Selling Author Hope Edelman (Motherless Daughters), Oprah's Book Club and Best Selling Author, Janet Fitch (White Oleander) and Oscarâ-nominated actress Quinn Cummings. The year's Fourth Annual Idyllwild Authors Series will feature 11 authors over a period of 10 weeks. For more information, please visit the website,
www.idyllwildauthors.com .
PEN Center USA, one of two centers for PEN International in the United States and the third largest in the world, was founded in 1943 and incorporated as a nonprofit association in 1981. PEN Center USA's membership of more than 800 writers includes poets, playwrights, essayists, novelists (for the original letters in the acronym, "PEN"), as well as television and screenwriters, critics, historians, editors, journalists, and translators. PEN Center USA strives to protect the rights of writers around the world, to stimulate interest in the written word, and to foster a vital literary community among the diverse writers living in the western United States. The organization, therefore, has two distinct yet complementary aims: to promote a literary culture and to protect freedom of expression. Among PEN Center USA's various activities are public literary events, a mentorship project, literary awards, and international human rights campaigns on behalf of writers who are censored or imprisoned.
