Barbara Mujica is a novelist, short story writer, essayist and critic. Her novel Frida is based on the tumultuous relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and the rivalry between Frida and her sister Cristina for Diego's affection. Published by Overlook in 2001 and in paperback by Plume in 2002, the book has appeared in fourteen languages and has been a bestseller in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Barbara Mujica's latest novel, Sister Teresa, is scheduled for publication by Overlook in 2007.

A Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University, Dr. Mujica is a specialist in Early Modern Spanish literature and contemporary Latin American Culture. She is currently President of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater and Editor of Comedia Performance, a jounal devoted to early modern theater. She has written extensively on Spanish literature, mysticism, the pastoral novel, and seventeenth-century theater, and her articles have appeared in many academic journals.

Dr. Mujica's books on early modern literature include Teresa de Jesus: Feminismo y espiritualidad (forthcoming), Women Writers of Early Modern Spain (2004), Et in Arcadia Ego: Essays on Death in the Pastoral Novel (1990, co-authored with Bruno Damiani), Iberian Pastoral Characters (1986), and Calderon's Characters: An Existential Point of View (1980). She has edited El texto puesto en escena: Estudios sobre la comedia en honor a Everett W. Hesse (2000, with Anita Stoll), Looking at the Comedia in the Year of the Quincentennial (1993, with Sharon Voros), and Texto y espectáculo (1989). She also edited Comedia Studies at the End of the Century, a special issue of the journal Hispania (Sept. 1999).

Bárbara Mujica has published eight anthologies of Spanish and Spanish American literature: Milenio: Mil años de literatura española (2001), Antología de la literatura española: Siglos XVIII y XIX (1999), Premio Nóbel: Once grandes escritores del mundo hispánico (1997), Texto y vida: Introducción a la literatura hispanoamericana (1992), Antología de la literatura española: Edad Media (1991), Antología de la literatura española: Renacimiento y Siglo de Oro (1991), Texto y vida: Introducción a la literatura española (1990), and Readings in Spanish Literature (1975). Her anthologies have been published by Georgetown University Press, Oxford University Press, John Wiley & Sons, and Harcourt College Publishing. Her articles have appeared in many scholarly journals and collections. She has also published numerous language books, the most recent being El próximo paso, published by Harcourt in 1996.

Her latest non-fiction work is Hispanomundo (2001), an overview of Latin American culture.

She is director of El Retablo, Georgetown University's Spanish-language theater group. From 2003-2006 she was a Helen Hayes judge. She serves on the board of GALA Hispanic Theater.

As book review editor of Américas, the cultural magazine of the Organization of American States, Dr. Mujica reviewed new books from Latin America and interviewed Latin American authors for fifteen years. Over 130 of her reviews and interviews were published in Books of the Américas: Reviews and Interviews from Américas Magazine, 1990-1995 (1997). She was also theater editor of the Latin American Handbook. Mujica's articles on Hispanic culture and language have appeared in hundreds of major newspapers and magazines.

Barbara Mujica has written several book-length works of fiction not mentioned above: The Deaths of Don Bernardo (novel, 1990), Sanchez across the Street (stories, 1997), Far from My Mother's Home (stories, 1999; French edition 2005). Appearing in numerous magazines including The Minnesota Review, Pangolin Papers, and The Literary Review, and anthologies such as Where Angels Glide at Dawn, eds. Lori Carlson and Cynthia Ventura, Intro. Isabel Allende (1990, 1993), What Is Secret: Stories by Chilean Women, ed. Marjorie Agosín (1995), Two Worlds Walking, ed. C. W. Truesdale and Diana Glancy (1994), and The House of Memory, ed. Marjorie Agosín (1999), Dr. Mujica's short stories have been nominated for numerous awards and prizes.

In 2003 Dr. Mujica won The Trailblazer's Award for Frida and other writings. In 1998 she won the Pangolin Prize for Best Short Story of the Year and in 1992 the E. L. Doctorow nternational Fiction Competition. She has also won grants and awards from Poets and Writers of New York, the Spanish Government, Georgetown University, and other institutions. She is a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize for Fiction. Mujica's essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Dallas Morning Star, and hundreds of other publications. In 1990 her essay "Bilingualism's Goal" was named one of the best 50 op-eds of the decade by The New York Times.

Dr. Mujica is a member of the editorial boards of Bulletin of the Comediantes and Hispania.