Carolina De Robertis

Carolina de Robertis is an Uruguayan-American author and teacher of creative writing at San Francisco State University. She is the author of five novels and the editor of an award-winning anthology, Radical Hope (2017), which includes essays by such writers as Junot Diaz and Jane Smiley. She is also well known for her translational work, frequently translating Spanish pieces.

Carolina De Robertis is the child of two Uruguayan parents. She was born in England and moved throughout her childhood, following the scientific career of her father, Edward De Robertis. De Robertis later moved to Basel (Switzerland), until finally ending up in Los Angeles, California. Aged 19, De Robertis came out as bisexual, which she had described as the beginning of the process of her parents disowning her, which was complete by the time she was 25.

 Describing her relationship with her parents, she said, "They actually dug in their heels and tried to turn my siblings against my first child when I was pregnant with the first child. I use that example to say; it's not true that everybody comes around." She worked as a rape counselor and was very active in the Bay Area's LGBTQ+ community for ten years in her 20s.

De Robertis received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1996. She also received a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Mills College in 2007. De Robertis released her first book, The Invisible Mountain, in 2009. The novel was an international best-seller, being translated into 17 languages, including Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, French, Hebrew, and Chinese. 

It won the best book for the San Francisco Chronicle, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Booklist. It was also a finalist for the California Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, and the VCU Cabell First Book Award. De Robertis' 2019 novel, Cantoras, is set in 1970s Uruguay. Its five protagonists are all lesbians. The book was selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice. It also won a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, as well as being a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award.

 In 2021, her novel The President and the Frog was published. José Mujica, the former President of Uruguay, heavily influences the character of the President in the book. Writing in The Nation, Lily Meyer said that the book "asks its readers to think seriously about the weight of taking political action, then suggests that they take it."