ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: What photos did Elizabeth Graver include in Kantika, and why?

Elizabeth Graver was born in Los Angeles in 1964, and grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University, and her M.F.A. from the Washington University in St. Louis.   She also did graduate work at Cornell University. Since 1993 she has been a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Boston College, where she is co-director of the Creative Writing Concentration. She also teaches fiction and nonfiction writing workshops, including “Advanced Fiction Workshop,” “Writing About Place” and “Writing Across Cultures”, as well as contemporary literature electives, most recently with a focus on American immigrant literatures.

Graver’s fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in fiction and her shorter writings have won prizes and been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Yaddo Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Elizabeth Graver’s just-published fifth novel, Kantika, was inspired by her grandmother, who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul and whose amazingly adventurous life journey took her to Spain, Cuba and finally New York.