Marie Arana is a former editor in chief of Book World at The Washington Post. Currently, she is a Writer at Large for The Post and a member of the Scholars Council at the Library of Congress. Arana is the author of a memoir about her bicultural childhood “American Chica,” which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award as well as the PEN/Memoir Award, and won the Books for a Better Life Award. She is the editor of a collection of Washington Post essays about the writer’s craft, “The Writing Life: How Writers Think and Work,” which is used as a textbook for writing courses in universities across the country. Her novel “Cellophane,” about the Peruvian Amazon, was a finalist for the John Sargent Prize. Her most recent novel is “Lima Nights.” She has chaired juries for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Awards, organized literary conferences for the Kennedy Center, and currently sits on the board of the National Book Festival. She has also been an active spokesperson on Latin America, Hispanic Americans and biculturalism. Currently, she is at work on a biography of Simón Bolívar, which is on contract with Simon & Schuster.