Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Alisa Valdes is an American award-winning journalist, bestselling novelist, and screenwriter, born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

While a student at Berklee, Valdes began writing freelance music reviews for The Boston Globe. After graduating from Berklee in 1992, she took an unpaid internship at the Village Voice, before going back to school to earn a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1994. Valdes joined the staff of The Boston Globe in 1994, where she wrote for the Living/Arts section. Her essay for The Boston Globe Magazine, "Daughter of Cuba," won first place in the 1998 SUNMAG essay contest. In 1999, Valdes left Boston for a position as a staff writer in the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. Her articles have appeared in dozens of newspapers, and she has written cover stories for Glamour and Redbook.

Her first novel, "The Dirty Girls Social Club", was purchased by St. Martin's Press a little more than a year after she left the Los Angeles Times. She was paid an advance of $475,000 after five publishing houses bid for the manuscript. The Dirty Girls Social Club garnered media attention and went on to become a New York Times bestseller and a Booksense 76 top pick. In 2013, Valdes formed her own production company, Valdes Entertainment Enterprises, to develop The Dirty Girls Social Club for a film. Valdes teamed up with television producers, MarVista Entertainment, to help produce the film. Valdes has gone on to write over 12 novels and a memoir.

Time magazine named her one of the "25 Most Influential Hispanics" in the United States. Latina Magazine named her a "Woman of the Year," and Entertainment Weekly hailed her as a "Breakout Literary Star."