VIVIANA PRADO-NÚÑEZ

author | poet | theatre artist

"Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling."

Anne Carson

ABOUT

Viviana Prado-Núñez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in a hospital with a 4.0 Google review rating and a view of the ocean. She has never seen Star Wars, eaten a grasshopper, or written a poem without the letter ‘e,’ though she hopes to do all three of those things in the future.

Previous credits include winning the 2017 Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature, winning the 2017 Morgan Parker Poetry Prize, longlisting for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award, and appearing on the New York Public Library’s recommended reading list for 2020 National Caribbean American Heritage Month for her novel, The Art of White Roses. She has also developed plays with The Center at West Park, Echo Theater Company’s 2019 National Young Playwrights in Residence program, Corkscrew Theater Festival, and The Parsnip Ship. She is also an actor, performance artist, filmmaker, and arts educator.

She graduated from Columbia University in 2020 with a B.A. in Drama and Theatre Arts and is currently based in New York City.

BOOKS

The Art of White Roses

Winner of the 2017 Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature

Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award

NYPL 2020 National Caribbean American Heritage Month Recommended Reading

It is 1957 in Marianao, a suburb on the outskirts of Havana. Adela Santiago is thirteen years old and lives in a small blue house with her mother, father, brother, and grandfather. And yet something is amiss. Her neighbors are disappearing. Not only that, but her parents' marriage seems to be disintegrating and her cousin is involved with a bombing at the Hotel Nacional. Welcome to a world where the sight of police officers shooting citizens in broad daylight is a normalcy, where every day there is a higher body count than the day before, where in the cramped pews of churches, in the creaking wood of backwards Havana alleys, a revolution is brewing. Welcome to Cuba.

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Reviews:

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A gorgeously written story full of nuance, sadness, and the joy of growing up. A terrific debut from an exciting new voice in young people's literature.

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For a young woman's debut novel, Viviana Prado-Núñez writes with startling assurance, eloquence, and beauty. A really promising writer from whom I hope we hear a great deal more.

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The Art of White Roses is a luminous coming-of-age story of a young girl navigating the Cuban revolution... This is a remarkable achievement from a major new talent.