Vega, Ed 1936-2008 (Ed Vega Yunqué, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, Edgardo Alberto Vega Yunqué, Edgardo Vega Yunqué)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 20, 1936, in Ponce, Puerto Rico; died August 26, 2008, in Brooklyn, NY. Educator, community organizer, novelist, and short-story writer. Vega was technically a Puerto Rican-American novelist of America's biggest melting pot, but most likely he would have rejected that literary pigeonhole with the same vigor that he rejected other attempts to stereotype his character or his work. Vega came to New York City as a teenager and immersed himself in the urban culture. He spent the 1960s as a director of social-service providers such as Block Communities, the Addiction Services Agency, and the Young Adults University Settlement. In the 1970s he taught at several urban colleges and universities of the City University of New York. By 1982 Vega had plunged into the writing life. His short fiction appeared in several magazines and was widely anthologized before he published his first novel, The Comeback, in 1985. Vega's fiction was described as fluid and fierce at the same time, and he reportedly disdained editorial intervention. In novels like No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again (2003), he wrote of the complex multigenerational, multicultural relationships of families like those he encountered in the Irish-Puerto Rican neighborhood of his youth. Vega spent the last twenty-five years of his life as a freelance writer, but he devoted part of the 1990s to his work as a cofounder of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center for artists, dancers, and actors. He was also an affiliate of the Ollantay Center for the Arts. Vega's other writings include the short- story collection Mendoza's Dreams (1987) and the novels The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisada Jungle (2004) and Blood Fugues (2006). Novels published after 2000 appeared under the name Edgardo Vega Yunqué.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, September 16, 2008, p. C13.