Bardach, Ann Louise

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Bardach, Ann Louise

PERSONAL:

Education: New York University School of the Arts, Hunter College, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Tina Bennett, Janklow & Nesbit Associates, 445 Park Ave., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist. Contributing editor of Vanity Fair. University of California, Santa Barbara, visiting professor of global journalism, 2000-07.

AWARDS, HONORS:

PEN USA Award for Journalism, 1995, for "Mexico's Poet Rebel," Vanity Fair, July, 1994; City and Regional Magazine Gold Award for profile, 2001, for "The Last Tycoon," Los Angeles Magazine, April, 2000; Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana was named one of the ten best books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review; City and Regional Magazine Silver Award for Reporting, 2001, for "Taming the Hydra-Headed Carnivorous Tabloid Beast," Los Angeles Magazine, September, 2004.

WRITINGS:

(With Joyce Milton) Vicki: Careless People in the Reagan Administration, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor and author of preface) Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion (short stories), Whereabouts Press (Berkeley, CA), 2002.

Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (nonfiction), Random House (New York, NY), 2002.

(Coeditor) The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro (nonfiction), Nation/Avalon (New York, NY), 2007.

Work represented in anthologies, including Killed: Journalism Too Hot to Print, edited by David Wallis, Nation/Avalon, 2004, and Mexico in Mind, edited by Maria Finn, Vintage, 2006. Contributor to periodicals, including Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Nation, New Republic, Washington Post, and the New York Times. Columnist for Newsweek International, 2003, and Slate.

Also author, with Rachel Kronstadt Mann, of feature film Backtrack, directed by Dennis Hopper, 1990. Author of teleplay for Sorry, Wrong Number, broadcast on CBS, 1989. Also author of screenplays The Land, Composure, Reclaimed, The Canvas, and Hope Street, and of the teleplay The Legacy.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ann Louise Bardach became a journalist shortly after earning a master's degree in English literature and being unable to find a university teaching job. While her work for national magazines and metropolitan newspapers has encompassed a variety of topics, she has written extensively on Cuba. In Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, she explores the tensions between the governments of the United States and Cuba. Since Fidel Castro became Cuba's leader in 1959, his dictatorial leadership and communist ideology have won him the enmity of the United States and led many Cubans to leave for Miami. Miami's substantial Cuban community is largely white and affluent, while Havana residents tend to be mixed-race and poor. Politics and family feuds also account for tensions between Miami Cubans and Havanans. In telling her overall story, Bardach deals with many individuals, including Elian Gonzalez, the child who was the subject of a custody battle between his father in Cuba and other relatives in Miami after his mother died on their journey to the United States.

Some reviewers deemed this book a thorough and worthwhile treatment of its subject. Bardach "offers an extraordinarily complete view of the personal and political gulf that separates Cubans," reported a Kirkus Reviews contributor. In the Library Journal, Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis praised Bardach's "clear explanations of events, individuals, and dynamics since the Cuban Revolution." Some commentators thought Cuba Confidential occasionally veered into gossip and conspiracy theories. William Ratliff, writing in the World and I, said this "sometimes leaves even fairly well-informed readers uncertain as to what should be taken seriously." He also took issue with some of her characterizations of Castro and of U.S. policy toward Cuba, but he added that "most readers could learn much from Bardach's interviews" and other research, and that her book effectively portrays "the razor-edge quality of relations between Washington, Miami, and Havana." A Publishers Weekly critic, while also voicing reservations about conspiracy theories and innuendo, concluded: "All in all, though, Bardach's muckraker is entertaining and disturbing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chatelaine, May, 1986, Marni Jackson, review of Vicki: Careless People in the Reagan Administration, p. 8.

Commentary, October, 2002, Mark Falcoff, "In Castro's Kingdom," p. 78.

Economist, November 23, 2002, "Miami Rules; Cuban-American Relations."

Foreign Affairs, January-February, 2003, Kenneth Maxwell, review of Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2002, review of Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion, p. 453; September 1, 2002, review of Cuba Confidential, p. 1274.

L.A. Weekly, October 11-17, 2002, Marc Cooper, "The Latin Implosion," review of Cuba Confidential.

Library Journal, March 1, 2002, "History/Politics," p. 517; October 15, 2002, Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis, review of Cuba Confidential, p. 86.

Newsweek, March 24, 1986, Gene Lyons, review of Vicki, p. 75.

Publishers Weekly, September 9, 2002, review of Cuba Confidential, p. 55.

Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2002, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, "Spinning the Dictator, and His Opponents," p. D6.

Washington Post Book World, December 26, 2002, Tom Gjelten, "One Big, Unhappy Family," review of Cuba Confidential, p. C4.

World and I, March, 2003, William Ratliff, "Revenge and Vengeance: An Investigative Reporter Reveals the Shattered Families, Crooked Politicians, and Warring Personalities behind the Forty-Three-Year Standoff between Miami and Havana," p. 239.