Lorraine M. Lopez is the author of Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (Curbstone 2003), a collection that earned the inaugural Miguel Marmol Prize for Fiction, and Call Me Henri (Curbstone 2006), a young adult novel. Her next book, The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters, is due out from Warner/ Hachette Books in spring 2008. An assistant professor of fiction writing and Latino literature at Vanderbilt University, she is also the cofounder of and the education programs director for the Institute for Violence Prevention in Athens, Georgia.