Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés was born in New Jersey to Cuban parents. Educated in Miami and New York, her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Southern Humanities Review, Flash Fiction, Saw Palm, Literary Mama, Kweli Journal, Guernica, and The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. Her short story collections, Oye What I’m Gonna Tell You (2015) and Marielitos, Balseros, and Other Exiles (2009), were #4 and #5 on the Guardian’s list of ten of the best books to help understand Cuba. Everyday Chica, winner of the 2010 Longleaf Press Poetry Prize was followed by Everyday Chica, Music and More, a poetry CD set to Caribbean folk music was released in 2011. She was the 2009 Theodore Morrison Fiction Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.