Michele Shaul is a descendent of Spanish and Cuban immigrants (third or fourth generation depending on which grandparent you count) and received her doctorate in Latin American Literature from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with a dissertation entitled Myth and Folklore in Mulata de Tal. She currently is a the Director of the Center for Latino Studies and a Professor of Spanish at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina where she was formerly Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages for 21 years. Her critical essays have been included in El sujeto femenino en escritoras hispánicas, Círculo de cultura panamericano, Selected Essays: International Conference on The Outsider, Ilustres autores guatemaltecos de los siglos XIX y XX as well as in Cien años de magia: ensayos críticos sobre la obra de Miguel Angel Asturias. Her interview with William De Paula, interpreter for the debates during the 1996 presidential and vice-presidential campaigns was published in the publication of the Carolinas Association of Translators. She collaborated with Oralia Preble-Niemi in the preparation of an entry on Miguel Angel Asturias in The Feminist Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature and her translation of the novel The Suitcases was published in 2005. Her poem“Vida cercada” appeared in Minerva (Vol. V, Number 2, septiembre-diciembre 2005). She has presented papers at numerous regional and national conferences. Research interests include the use of myth and folklore in Latin American literature, the expression of exile in literature as well as Latino writers in the United States. She also played the role of María Josefa in Theatre Charlotte’s 2009 staged reading of La casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca as well as in the performance of selected scenes of the same play at the Con A de Arte evening in June 2009.