Artist Spotlight: Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Stephanie Elizondo Griest hails from the Texas-Mexico borderlands, but an acute sense of wanderlust has fueled her travels to nearly 50 countries. She is the author of five award-winning books that fuse memoir with literary journalism, including: Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines; and All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands. She is currently Associate Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Stephanie met hanan last March, when she traveled to Miami to conduct research for her latest book project that features women artists from around the globe. hanan invited her to a panel at the Lebanese Love Affair, and then sat for an interview afterward. As soon as hanan mentioned the upcoming Havana Habibi festival, Stephanie knew she must attend. Not only would it make a fantastic chapter in her book, but Stephanie also needed an infusion of joy. Just three months prior, she had endured her final round of chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, and was still trying to recover.

“I studied belly dancing myself, back in college in the nineties,” Stephanie said, “and have missed that sense of sisterhood ever since. I was also a huge fan of Cuba, having visited twice before. So there was no way I was going to miss this fusion of the two!”

While in Havana, Stephanie interviewed several of the international teachers—including Valerick Molinary, Myra Krien, and Tamalyn Dallal—as well as co-founder Gretel Sanchez Llabre and members of Cuba Soho. Though she spent much of the festival with a notebook in her hands, she hit the dance floor a few times to revel in the music.

“It was truly epic,” she said. “A year’s worth of happiness, inspiration, and discovery crammed into four days.”