Barbara Mujica, professor emerita at Georgetown University, is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Her novel Frida (Overlook Press, 2001) was an international bestseller that appeared in eighteen languages and a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate. Her novel Sister Teresa (Overlook Press, 2007) was adapted for the stage by the Actors’ Studio in Los Angeles. The play premiered in November 2013. Her novels, I Am Venus (Overlook 2013) and Lola in Paradise (in progress) were both prize-winners in the Maryland Writers Association National Fiction Competition. I Am Venus was a quarter-finalist in the 2020 ScreenCraft Cinematic Novel competition. Mujica has also won several prizes for her short stories, including the E. L. Doctorow International Fiction Competition, the Pangolin Prize, and the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award for short fiction. Her story “Jason’s Cap” won first prize in the 2015 Maryland Writers’ Association national fiction competition. “Imagining Iraq” and “Ox” won prizes in previous years. Two of her stories were adapted for the stage by the Jewish Women’s Theater in Los Angeles.

At Georgetown, Mujica taught courses in Latin American culture, Frida Kahlo and the art of the Mexican Revolution, and early modern Spanish literature. Her most recent scholarly books are Religious Women and Epistolary Culture in the Discalced Carmelite Reform: The Disciples of Teresa de Avila (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and Collateral Damage: Women Write about War (University of Virginia Press, 2021). The mother of a Marine, Mujica was faculty adviser of the GU Student Veterans Association and co-chair of the Veterans Support Team. Her articles on veterans’ issues have appeared in numerous publications. In 2015, she received a Presidential Medal from Georgetown University for her work on behalf of student veterans.