Zilia L. Lage papers

Zilia Luisa Lage is a fiction writer, publisher, and translator. She was born on February 1, 1941 in Havana, Cuba to Luis B. Lage, a bill collector, and Z. Isabel Bello, a typist. As an adolescent, Lage lived in New York from 1951 to 1957. She worked as an export documentation clerk for Pittsburgh Plate Glass International in Havana from 1959 to1960 and graduated as a commercial accountant from the Escuela Professional de Comercio in Havana in 1961.That same year, she left Cuba for the U.S.

From 1962-1967, Lage worked as the agency secretary for Occidental Life Insurance Company in Miami, Florida. From 1972-1976, she worked as the secretary to vice president and branch manager of the Chicago Title Insurance Company. She then worked as a corporation banking assistant for Southeast Bank (National Association) in Miami Springs, Florida from 1978-1990. In 1989, she earned her Associate of Arts in Business Administration from Miami-Dade Community College

Since writing and translate starting in 1991, Lage has written a number of self-published books including: Genealogía - Laje (Guarina Publishing, 2006), 100 Recetas de cocina tradicionales (Guarina Publishing, 2004), Divagaciones (Guarina Publishing, 2003), Love Letters in the Sand (Guarina Publishing, 2002), Cartas Son Cartas (Guarina Publishing, 2001), The Sugar Cane Curtain (Guarina Publishing, 2000) which won numerous awards, and La cortina de bagazo (Guarina Publishing, 1995). Lage won First Prize of the Octavio Paz International Biography Contest of the "Atenea" Miami Cultural Club, in November 2005 for her biography of Antonio Maceo and she won the Writers' Journal 3rd prize for photography in November 2002.

In an interview, Zilia L. Laje said: "My primary motivation for writing is a pressing need to tell the story I have inside. Betty Smith, Kathleen Winsor, Herman Wouk, Rona Jaffe, and James Joyce have influenced my work. My writing process is to write a short draft with the plot and key dialogue, then research the background extensively and take hundreds of notes, which I incorporate, and finally rewrite the whole story. My writing is inspired by the trauma of migration and an ache that our way of life is disappearing. I want to leave a testimony of our customs. I enjoy using a lot of hidden symbolism that I'm sure goes undetected by the general reader."

Lage is the founder of the Cuban Writers in Miami, a group which gathers at the annual Miami book fair to exhibit their works. She has been an exhibitor at the Miami International Book Fair since 1995. She is also a member of the Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists Association, the Center of Writers in Exile, and a correspondent for the Women's National Book Association. She is a member of the Cuban Genealogical Society, the Alliance Française de Miami, Círculo de Cultura Panamericano, and Miami-Dade Community College Alumni Association.