Judith Ortiz Cofer  (b. 1952) LINKS The Global Education Project: Judith Ortiz Cofer http://ultrix.ramapo.edu/global/cofer.html Judith Ortiz Cofer speaks out about her Puerto Rican heritage, her passion for writing, her role as an artist, and myriad other subjects at this informative Web site. Judith Ortiz Cofer http://parallel.park.uga.edu/~jcofer/ The University of Georgia’s page for Judith Ortiz Cofer, their Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing, offers its visitors a short biography and a wide array of links to her Curriculum Vitae, interviews, reviews of her work, and more. Hers—Cofer http://www.stedwards.edu/hum/drummond/coferhers.html In “Don't Misread My Signals: I May Dress in Scarlet, but Don't Mistake Me For a Hot Tamale,” Cofer’s essay for the “Hers” column in Glamour magazine, she speaks about learning to fight stereotypes while growing up in New Jersey. Judith Ortiz Cofer http://www.chelseaforum.com/speakers/Cofer.htm The Chelsea Forum’s page on Judith Ortiz Cofer highlights many of the poet’s awards and achievements in addition to offering the reader a list of her published works. BIOGRAPHY Cofer was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico. She earned a B.A. (1974) from Augusta College and an M.A. (1977) from Florida Atlantic University and briefly attended Oxford University. She began her teaching career as a bilingual instructor in Florida public schools and taught at a number of schools, including the University of Miami and the University of Georgia. Her first volume of poems, Latin Women Pray, appeared in 1981, and she has since published poetry collections, essays, and a novel. Her recent work includes several multigenre collections of stories, poems, and essays about coming of age in the barrio, including The Year of Our Revolution: New and Selected Stories and Poems (1998) and Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer (2000). Cofer points out that her family is an important source for her writing. “The place of birth itself becomes a metaphor for the things we must all leave behind; the assimilation of a new culture is the coming into maturity by accepting the terms necessary for survival.”