Josefina López

Artistic Director, Josefina López (born 1969, San Luis Potosí, Mexico) is a Chicana playwright, perhaps best known as the author of the play (and co-author of the screenplay) Real Women Have Curves . López is also the Founding Artistic Director of the CASA 0101 theater located in Boyle Heights, CA, which began in 2000.

López was born in 1969, in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and at age five emigrated with her family to the United States, where they settled in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts before obtaining a BA in film and screenwriting from Columbia College Chicago, and an MFA in screenwriting from the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA. She also graduated with a Supreme Diploma from Le Cordon Bleu. Lopez was undocumented for 13 years before she received Amnesty in 1987 and eventually became a U.S. Citizen in 1995. Lopez is the recipient of a number of other awards and accolades, including a formal recognition from U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer's 7th Annual "Women Making History" banquet in 1998; and a screenwriting fellowship from the California Arts Council in 2001. She and Real Women Have Curves co-author George LaVoo won the Humanitas Prize for Screenwriting in 2002, The Gabriel Garcia Marquez Award from Los Angeles

After having over 100 productions of her plays throughout the United States, Josefina López is one of today's preeminent Chicana writers. citation needed She has written several plays such as Simply Maria, Or the American Dream ; Confessions of Women From East L.A. ; Boyle Heights ; Lola Goes To Roma ; Food For The Dead ; Unconquered Spirits ; Queen of the Rumba and Real Women Have Curves . She is the co-screenwriter of the film version of her play Real Women Have Curves (2002), starring America Ferrera ( Ugly Betty ), Lupe Ontiveros, and Ingrid Oliu ( Stand and Deliver ). The movie garnered much acclaim, including at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival where the film won the "Audience Award" and a "Special Jury Award for Acting." Josefina has written several other screenplays including Loteria for Juarez about the mysterious murders of women in the Mexico/US border town of Ciudad Juárez; ADD Me to the Party , an original comedic screenplay about three Latinas a

Simply Maria, or the American Dream edit Josefina López's first play is Simply Maria, or the American Dream (1987) which she wrote while still in high school at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. This wildly funny play tells the story of Maria, a young, precocious Latina aspiring to be an actor, and her dream of going to college. The story begins in Mexico with Maria's parents eloping. Maria is born, and shortly after they leave for the U.S. her father, Ricardo, tells Maria that in America, with an education, she can have the American dream. Maria believes him and studies hard. However, when she tells her parents she wants to go to college, they order her to get married instead. Maria is so upset she cries herself to sleep and has a nightmare in which her American self and her Mexican self wrestle with each other. She gets married and gives birth to six babies. Her wedding dress attacks her and a giant tortilla squashes her. Maria is awakened by her mother's

She taught writing courses at California State University Northridge in the mid-1990s.