Ivy-league homegirl, Sofia Quintero is a writer, activist, educator, and speaker . Born into a working-class Dominican-Puerto Rican family in the Bronx where she still resides, she earned a BA in history-sociology from Columbia University in 1990 and her MPA from the university's School of International and Public Affairs in 1992.
An unapologetic generalist who has worked on a variety of issues from fighting police brutality to defending multicultural education, Quintero was named by
City Limits Magazine as one of the “New School of Activists Most Likely to Change New York.” Quintero currently sits on the board of the Brecht Forum, the New World Foundation and the Advocacy Institute.
Her first feature-length screenplay “Interstates” won the 2001 San Francisco Black Film Festival screenplay competition as well as the 1998 Montage Entertainment Diversity in Screenwriting contest and was twice a finalist for the screenwriting lab at Sundance. Her second screenplay - the baseball comedy “M.L.B”.- was a finalist for the ABC New Talent Development Award in 2003.
Quintero co-founded Chica Luna Productions, with Elisha Miranda, to identify, develop and support other women of color seeking to make socially conscious entertainment in 2001. Chica Luna’s signature project The F-Word is a multimedia justice project for young women of color ages 16-25 that seeks to build the next cadre of socially conscious filmmakers.
Quintero also wrote two short films that Miranda directed and produced and that have won acclaim on the festival circuit. "Corporate Dawgz" is a hip hop “dramedy” that celebrates white allies yet rejects the wigger/savior dichotomy that dominates the popular media’s depiction of whites who seek racial harmony. "Blind Date" is a feminist “anti-romantic” comedy where a happy ending means the heroine does not embark on another questionable relationship.
Under the pen name Black Artemis, Sofia wrote
Explicit Content - the first novel about hip hop with female protagonists - which was published by New American Library/Penguin in August 2004. Her second Black Artemis novel
Picture Me Rollin’ was published in June 2005, and her third Black Artemis novel
Burn hits bookstores this year. Quintero’s novels as Black Artemis have been hailed by critics of all stripes – reviewers, educators and readers – for being as intelligent and substantive as they are entertaining and accessible.
Quintero also writes “chica lit” under her real name. Her debut novella
The More Things Change appears in Friday Night Chicas, the first chick-lit anthology by and about Latinas. She recently published her first chica lit novel entitled
Divas Don’t Yield as part of a two-book deal with One World/Random House.
Divas Don’t Yield follows four girlfriends as they drive from New York City to San Francisco, each packing a little more “baggage” than she thought. Quintero’s second novel for Random House –
The Arrangement – will be published in June 2009.
