(Lima, Peru) A writer, publisher, journalist and member of the Library of Congress’s Council of the Learned. She has published a book of memoir about her bicultural childhood in Peru and the United States, American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood (shortlisted for the 2001 National Book Award and the Martha PEN/Albrand Award for the Art of Memoir). Her novel Cellophane (Dial/Random House, 2006) was shortlisted for the prestigious John Sargent Award, and her novel Lima Nights (Dial/Random House, 2009) was chosen by El Comercio newspaper as one of the five best novels of 2013. Her book about Simón Bolívar, Bolívar: American Liberator (Simón & Schuster, 2013), won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Biography category. For many years she has been Literary Editor at the Washington Post, a critic and commentator on fiction and non-fiction publications, a specialist in Hispano-American culture and director of the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. Other publications by her include Stone Offerings: Machu Picchu’s Terraces of Enlightenment, with photographs by Mike Torrey, and Silver, Sword and Stone. In March 2015, Arana directed the Iberian Suite Festival Literary Series at the Kennedy Center.