Carmen de Monteflores is a native Puerto Rican writer living in the U. S. She is the author of the well-received novel, Cantando Bajito/ Singing Softly. She wrote and produced the play, Blood Lines, presented twice in San Francisco, and has written articles, poetry and essays. She is currently at work on a third novel about a teacher in Puerto Rico during the turbulent 1930s and a collection of short reflective essays inspired by shamanism. de Monteflores weaves fictional stories about the island where she grew up and her experiences as a Latina in the U. S. in vivid images informed by her long training in art and by her poetic imagination. A mother, grandmother, lesbian, artist, psychotherapist, lover of nature and beauty, and student of shamanism, de Monteflores brings all of her lived experience to her rich and layered writing.

de Monteflores attended Wellesley College where she received a B. A. in Art History and she has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. She studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Art Students League in New York City. Before moving to the West Coast she lived for several years at a cattle ranch in Montana. After settling in the Bay Area she began to write poetry and completed an early play presented in San Francisco. Her first novel Cantndo Bajito/ Singing Softly (Aunt Lute, 1989), about three generations of Puerto Rican women, received a California Arts Council Fellowship for Literature. Susan Griffin wrote about Cantando Bajito: “A moving and powerful novel…The language of the narrative is rich and evocative and the characters are both real and surreal in the intensity of imagination. An important book.”

de Monteflores also wrote and produced a play, Blood Lines, about an artist and her schizophrenic brother. She has published articles on psychotherapy and general interest essays that have appeared in several anthologies. Her apprenticeship in shamanism has been a life-changing experience.

Carmen de Monteflores lives in Berkeley, California where she spends her time writing, practicing psychotherapy, enjoying her family, walking, contemplating nature, gardening and growing wisdom. “Writing is a vehicle for exploring my vision of the worlds I live in and sharing that vision with others. It is a tool of discovery. When I write, I find out who I am and reconnect with what is meaningful in my life. It is a way of coming to terms with the varied experiences I have had and being able to say: “I was here. I lived, I saw, I felt life in all its richness and complexity. Here are my footprints.”