![Picture](/uploads/1/0/4/6/10462382/892764784.jpg)
Julia Alvarez was born in New York on March 27th, 1950. Her family moved back to the Dominican Republic when she was just three months old. Her father was involved in an underground plot to overthrow the dictator Rafael Trujillo. The movement was discovered and the family fled back to America. The family left the Dominican Republic four months before the Mirabal sisters were murdered. Alvarez was 10 years old. In America, Alvarez faced homesickness and taunting from her school classmates. She had a passion for reading and writing, and decided to become a writer by high school. Alvarez attended college at Connecticut College, Middlebury College in Vermont, and Syracuse University. In 1989, Alvarez married Bill Eichner, an ophthalmologist. and she continues to write and teach at Middlebury College. She is now a writer-in-residence there.