Magda Montiel Davis

MAGDA MONTIEL DAVIS was born Magda de la Caridad Montiel Hernández in Havana, Cuba when her island homeland might as well have been the 48th state of her neighbors to the north. Then came the Revolution but her capitalist parents took themselves and her sister (a capitalist even then), and her eight-year-old self right out of the island. She graduated from Central High in the heart of Miami’s inner city where she didn’t learn much in the way of academics but she did learn the ways of the world—so, that’s a plus right there. Then she majored in English at the University of Miami where she graduated magna cum laude and was awarded a University of Miami Honor Scholarship. She went on to law school and hated it, but persisted because Cuban girls do not disappoint their papis. Besides, how could she be such a failure at so young an age? Some would say she did it all wrong: She set out to be a lawyer to help others, not to make money. For 33 years (2 months and 8 days), she was a poor, happy lawyer helping foreign nationals attain the American Dream. Now she’s a poor and happy writer, a second-year MFA student at the University of Iowa’s Fabulously Phenomenal Nonfiction Writing Program. In between, she was the democratic nominee for U.S. Congress in south Florida’s District 18. Magda’s work has been recognized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing series. She has published essays in Bellevue Literary Review; Cimarron Review; MARY: a Journal of New Writing, and others. Currently, she is working on the final edits to her memoir, Kissing Fidel. Miami is supposed to be home but she’s working really hard at getting her Brooklynite husband (who, for reasons lost on her, likes Miami) to move a bit north, a bit west, and weather the Iowa winters with her. Her 5 children, now grown, can stay where they are.