| Maria Espinosa | |
| Birth Name: | Paula Cronbach |
| Birth Date: | 6 January 1939 |
| Birth Place: | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Nationality: | American |
| Education: | Harvard University Columbia University San Francisco State University (MA) |
| Awards: | American Book Award (1996) |
| Spouse: | Mario Espinosa Wellmann |
| Children: | 1 |
| Parents: | Robert Cronbach Maxine Cronbach |
Maria Espinosa (born Paula Cronbach; 1939) is an American novelist, poet, and translator.[1] [2]
Espinosa was born January 6, 1939, in Boston, Massachusetts, to sculptor Robert Cronbach and a poet mother, Maxine Cronbach. She grew up on Long Island with two younger brothers, Michael Cronbach, and Lee Cronbach, a musician. She attended Harvard and Columbia Universities and received an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University. While living in Paris, she met and married Mario Espinosa Wellmann, a writer and photographer. Their marriage was tumultuous and lasted only a few years. In 1978 she married Walter Selig, a research chemist who fled from Nazi Germany as a child. Most of her adult life she has lived in Northern California. She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has one daughter from her first marriage, Carmen Espinosa, a dancer and social worker.
At Harvard Espinosa studied with postmodern American novelist John Hawkes. While at Columbia she sent corresponded with Anais Nin, who strongly encouraged her writing. In the 1970s she studied with Leonard Bishop at private workshops held in people's homes in Berkeley, California. She has taught at New College of California, City College of San Francisco, as a guest writer at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and has mentored women with the Afghan Women's Writing Project. She has led many informal writing workshops. Her poetry, articles translations, and short fiction have appeared in numerous anthologies.