Liza Ann Acosta was born in Brooklyn and raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico. This Boricua migrated to Literature, History, and Chemistry in South Carolina. She loved the South so much she did not want to stray too far and went to North Carolina to pursue a Master’s degree in English Literature. She worked as a translator for Hemingway biographer Michael Reynolds translating letters from a Cuban fisherman and pamphlets on bullfighting from the 1930’s. Her edited translation of the play Carnaval afuera, carnaval adentro by Rene Marques was the subject of MA thesis. After completing her MA, she read a thousand and one plays and she earned her PhD in Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University in 2001. Her dissertation explored the use of ritual in women’s drama, focusing on the work of individual artists and collectives.
North Park University was her next gig, where she teaches courses in Race, Gender, and Post-Colonial Literature as well as Creative Nonfiction. She became the Chair of the English Department, then the Division Director and Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, now she is University Dean. As you can tell, she is very tired. She is also an ensemble member of Teatro Luna, Chicago’s All Latina theatre company and she works regularly as a dramaturg with Urban Theater Company. Putas!, a show about her quirky and transgressive female ancestors received a workshop production in Fall 2012. She loves writing about nuns, her family, and the peculiar.
