Laura Restrepo, Cornell University, A.D.White Professor-at-Large, 2007-2013 (Humanities) is one of the most prominent of contemporary Latin American novelists and renowned Colombian journalist. She is a gifted storyteller in both Spanish and English who has achieved the rare distinction of having all of her novels translated into English and numerous other languages (at least fifteen). Ms. Restrepo has been both a witness/participant as well as a chronicler of the tumultuous decades since the Cuban Revolution and their impact on Latin America, especially Colombian, politics, culture, and society. As an eminent fiction writer, journalist, and political activist she is widely sought out to speak at universities and political forums because of her expertise in the Colombian Diaspora to Europe and the Americas and her profound knowledge of her country’s political scene, including conflicts with its different guerrilla factions that have pushed the country to the brink of civil war. She has been a significant political actor on behalf of de-militarization and domestic peace at both at home and abroad. In 1983, she was named as a member of a commission by then Colombian President Belisario Betancur, to negotiate peace with the militant rebel forces. Although peace was negotiated and followed by several months of truce, a breach of this action led subsequently to further political instability, which forced her into self-imposed exile (Spain and Mexico) for six years. During that time she continued the peace negotiations over long distance, which finally led to guerrilla disarmament (1989). Ms. Restrepo was a well-liked and respected professor of literature at the National University of Colombia in Bogota for several years. She is hailed as an inspirational, highly admired, approachable, and committed educator as evidenced through her numerous engagements at other academic institutions. This includes a recent visit to Cornell in the spring of 2006. Likewise, her fiction is widely assigned in courses, which cross academic boundaries from the humanities to the social sciences.
Most recently, Laura Restrepo was awarded the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for 2007. She is the recipient of numerous literary awards including Grinzane Cavour 2006 Prize in Italy for best foreign fiction; the VII Premio Alfaguara de Novella Prize (2004) for Delirio; the Premio Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz at the Guadalajara Book Fair (1997) for The Angel of Galilea (1995); Premio Arzobispo San Clemente Award (2002) for Leopard in the Sun (1993).
She graduated with a degree in philosophy and letters from the University of the Andes, and completed post-graduate work in political science.