Judith Ortiz Cofer

Lovingly referred to as "JOC" by the Augusta University Archive Team, Judith Ortiz Cofer was an influential Puerto Rican writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico on February 24th, 1952 and immigrated to the United States in 1956. She spent her adolescent years in Patterson, New Jersey before moving to Augusta, Georgia in 1967. Her final two years of primary schooling were completed at Butler High School. She then attended Augusta College, now known as Augusta University, where she earned her B.A. in English Literature. She went on to receive her M.A. in English Literature from Florida Atlantic University in 1978. Cofer's critically acclaimed works include The Latin Deli, Silent Dancing, the short story collection An Island Like You, and the Pulitzer Prize nominated novel The Line of The Sun. As well as a writer, she was a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia from 1984 until 2013. Cofer is nationally recognized for her evocative take on immigrant identity and gender within her work. She was inducted into the Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame in 2010. In December 2016, she died from liver cancer at the age of  64 in Louisville, Georgia.