The NYC launching of Anna Veltfort’s English edition of her highly acclaimed one-of-a-kind graphic memoir on her years as an adolescent in early revolutionary Cuba. With an exclusive screening of some of the book’s most piercing images, revealing Veltfort’s extraordinary talent
as an artist as well. The author will be interviewed by Baruch College professor Ted Henken.
This literary event is part of the CreateNYC Language Access program, and it will be held in English, followed by a bilingual Q&A.
INSTITUTO CERVANTES
211 East 49th Street, bet. 2nd & 3rd Aves., NYC
FREE ADMISSION
RSVP at: info@cubanculturalcenter.org
Anna Veltfort was born in Germany in 1945. In 1952 she emigrated to the U.S. with her mother, who then married an American, a communist veteran of the Abraham Lincoln International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. In the wake of the Cuban revolution in 1959, her stepfather offered his services as an electronic engineer to the Cuban state, and in 1962 moved his family to Cuba. Anna attended high school in Havana and then the School of Arts and Letters at the University of Havana, where she earned a Masters in Art History.
At the end of 1972, she returned to the U.S. and settled in New York City, where she still resides. Since 2007, she keeps an archival collection of Cuban historical artefacts (www.annaillustration.com/archivodeconnie/), including documents, publications, graphic art and music, which has attracted a wide range of scholars interested in the Cuban Revolution.
(CUNY). He holds a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and is a past president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE, 2012-2014). Henken specializes in the social implications of Cuban economic reform and the rise of the micro-enterprise sector on the island over the last 20 years. He is the co-author with Archibald Ritter of the book “Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape” (FirstForum Press, 2015), to be published in 2020 by Editorial Hypermedia in an updated Spanish edition with a new epilogue covering the 2014-2019 period. Henken also closely follows the political and socioeconomic impacts of increased internet access in Cuba during the past decade. He writes the annual “Freedom on the Net” and “Freedom in the World” reports on Cuba for Freedom House.This event is co-sponsored by Instituto Cervantes
And is supported by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
