JUDITH ORTIZ COFER (1952-2016) was the Regents' and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing Emerita at the University of Georgia. She is also the author of The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women , An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio , Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer ; and many other books. The University of Georgia Press published her first novel, The Line of the Sun , in 1989.