Ana María (Ía) Carbonell
Fiction
Berkeley, CA
Ana María (Ía) Carbonell was born in Uruguay, grew up outside of Boston, and has lived most of her adult life in the Bay Area, where she writes and teaches. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Catamaran Literary Reader, The MacGuffin, Mom Egg Review, Saranac Review, and elsewhere. It was also a finalist for the Shirley Holden Helberg Grant and the Tucson Festival of Books’ Literary Contest.
Ana María is both a poet and a fiction writer. She is currently working on Purple Irises/Los Lirios Morados, a linked short story collection that follows mostly women characters navigating love and betrayal across two countries—the U.S. and Uruguay—as political upheaval and cultural displacement test their resilience. In one story, a twenty-something woman searches for love amid ethnocentric beliefs that erase her, and in another, a grown daughter keeps seeking love from her self-absorbed mother—a displaced immigrant who internalizes patriarchal views that she cannot exist without a man. In other stories, a man believes in the principles of the American Dream—equal opportunity and honesty—to such a degree he rejects his own culture, standing alone until he finds a compadre; a middle-aged woman refuses to allow her oppressive family and the Uruguayan dictatorship to silence her; and a seven-year-old gathers all her strength to heal her mother from the trauma of torture. While the narratives are mostly realistic, some take such deep psychological dives, they nod toward the supernatural, what could be called magical realism or feminist Gothic. For example, one character welcomes a ghost to avoid loneliness; another recrafts the past to deny the reality of abandonment; and an old house embodies and supports its owner in the face of social and political oppression.
Ana María's work has been supported by a Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, a Ragdale Residency, and a sabbatical from Diablo Valley College. She currently lives in Berkeley with her musician husband and rescue pup.