BC readers know Ann Hagman Cardinal as the author of Café Con Lupe, and as a music and television reviewer. She's also a freelance writer, novelist, columnist, as well as the National Marketing Director for Union Institute & University. Ann has a B.A. in Latino Studies from Norwich University and an M.A. in sociology and creative writing from Vermont College of Union Institute & University. She is currently working on her MFA in Writing from Vermont College.

Her column, Café Con Lupe, appears in the state-wide publication Vermont Woman. She just completed her second novel entitled La Mongosta and The Pirate and is hard at work on her third. She lives in Vermont with her husband Doug and son, Carlos. She is also the author of The Gift of the Cuentista, a breakout novel of depth, of roots, of Puerto Rican identity, and and family. It is also the story of one's girl's odyssey to adulthood and the meaning of a very special gift of sight.

Ann is a sister of my heart, and she's also one of the Sister Chicas trio of authors. Leni was written by Ann as wry, tough/tender, with a soul deep as a hidden aquifer. This too, is Ann.

Describe your journey in becoming a writer. How is it integrated with your identity as a woman, as a Latina? Can you talk about your major influences, both personally and in a literary sense?

I never imagined I would be a writer until I returned to college as an adult student. Even then, if I hadn’t have been at a non-traditional program where I was exposed to other students doing different kinds of studies I’m not sure I ever would have become one. I met some wonderful writers who encouraged me, and after a year of insisting, “I’m not a writer!” I got the bug. But it was inspired by my desire to pass on elements of my Puerto Rican heritage and mother’s family to my son, Carlos. He never got to meet his abuela, so it is a way to put him in touch with her. And it’s helped me identify with those roots as well.

The cuentistas in my family, the storytellers that came before, were my first influences. After that I was completely enthralled by Isabel Allende with her lyrical and beautifully written novels with their powerful political subtext. Also, Julia Alvarez is a wonderful writer, and I like that she publishes in different genres: novels, memoir, poetry, children’s literature. And Judith Ortiz Cofer, I was so taken with Silent Dancing, I didn’t realize it was a young adult book until after I read it. She has just the kind of clean but elegant prose I admire.

What differences do you experience as a novelist vs. writing as essayist/columnist/journalist? What parts of yourself take the foreground... the background when you work in different genres?