Maria Espinosa

Maria Espinosa
Born	Paula Cronbach (1939-01-06) January 6, 1939 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist poet translator
Nationality	American
Education	Harvard University Columbia University San Francisco State University (MA)
Notable awards	American Book Award (1996)
Spouse	Mario Espinosa Wellmann Walter Selig ​ (m. 1978)​
Children	1
Parents	Robert Cronbach Maxine Cronbach
Website
www.mariaespinosa.com

Maria Espinosa (born Paula Cronbach; 1939) is an American novelist, poet, and translator.

Personal life

Espinosa was born January 6, 1939, in Boston, Massachusetts, to sculptor Robert Cronbach and a poet mother, Maxine Cronbach. She grew up on Long Island with two younger brothers, Michael Cronbach, and Lee Cronbach, a musician. She attended Harvard and Columbia Universities and received an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University. While living in Paris, she met and married Mario Espinosa Wellmann, a writer and photographer. Their marriage was tumultuous and lasted only a few years. In 1978 she married Walter Selig, a research chemist who fled from Nazi Germany as a child. Most of her adult life she has lived in Northern California. She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has one daughter from her first marriage, Carmen Espinosa, a dancer and social worker.

Career

At Harvard Espinosa studied with postmodern American novelist John Hawkes. While at Columbia she corresponded with Anaïs Nin, who strongly encouraged her writing. In the 1970s she studied with Leonard Bishop at private workshops held in people's homes in Berkeley, California. She has taught at New College of California, City College of San Francisco, as a guest writer at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and has mentored women with the Afghan Women's Writing Project. She has led many informal writing workshops. Her poetry, articles translations, and short fiction have appeared in numerous anthologies.

Awards

• 1996 American Book Award for Longing.
• 2010 PEN Oakland awards Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence.

Works

Poetry

• Love Feelings, Four Winds, 1967
• Night Music, The Tides, 1969

Novels

• (reprint Arte Publico Press, 1995, )
• Suburban Souls. Tailwinds Press. 2020. .

External links

• "Author's website"
• "Maria Espinosa", Red Room
• "Ample Substance: Maria Espinosa on Pamela Uschuk’s Crazy Love", Gently Read Literature
• "Interview with Nino Valaoritis," The Rumpus, 2018/08
• "Catalina Mi Amor," Persimmontree Spring 2018
• The Magnolia Review, archives, volume 5, issue 2
• Yellow Mama Archives
• Fixed Free Poetry Anthology, 2018
• The New Mexico Jewish Link, "Protesting the Detention of Asylum Seekers," by Maria Espinosa
• Authors Answer, "Interview with Maria Espinosa, 5/11/20"