American dramatist
Dolores Prida (September 5, 1943 – January 20, 2013) was a Cuban-American columnist and playwright. Catherine E. Shoichet of "CNN" said that she was a "Latina Dear Abby".
She wrote for a weekly column of the "El Diario La Prensa". She also contributed to "Latina" magazine and the "New York Daily News". At "Latina" she wrote her "Dolores Dice" ("Dolores says" in Spanish) column. Prida was a founding member of the "Latina" magazine.
History.
Prida was born on September 5, 1943, in Caibarién, Cuba. She was the oldest of three children. She had two sisters, Lourdes and Maria. Though she showed no prior interest in theater, Prida did have an eye for literature as she often wrote poetry and short stories as a teenager. Shortly after the completion of the Cuban Revolution, her father left for the United States, fleeing in a boat. In 1961, two years after the departure of their father, Prida and her mother and two siblings left Cuba. The family settled in New York City, where Prida would end up spending the rest of her life, and where she was first exposed to the theater. 
She began learning the inner workings of the theater and production in 1976, her first experience having been working with the Teatro de Orilla in the Lower East Side. She wrote her first play the following year and went on to work with other collectives such as DUO, INTAR, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, and Repertorio Español. 
Education and Career.
Prida attended Hunter College, where she studied Latin American Literature, taking night classes while working at a bakery. It was here where she also took her first drama classes. Prida never completed her college career before entering the publishing industry and becoming a journalist, working for Schraffts Restaurants as their company magazine editor. It was during this time in 1967, that Prida published her first written work, a poetry book titled, "Treinta y un poemas."
Two years later, she quit her job at Schraffts and was hired as a temporary foreign correspondant for Collier-MacMillan International Publishing Company. Prida then entered a period from the 1970s to the 1980s where she worked a string of temporary jobs in writing:
While these jobs short, they were pivotal to her skills as a bilingual writer, which she frequently exercised. During this time, Prida wrote a majority of her plays.
Works.
Plays
Poetry
Awards/Recognitions.
Source:
Reception.
In "The New York Times", D. J. R. Buckner said that in "Casa Propia", "[n]ot much more is needed for comedy than throwing these broadly drawn strong characters together" and that in regards to the characters, "Fanny, Olga, Manolo and Junior are likely to live with you for a long time." He said that Prida "has a good ear for New York Hispanic street language, and this cast exploits it so hilariously that at times even a viewer with no Spanish may want to set aside the simultaneous translation earphones and take it in raw: the grimaces and gestures reveal what is meant, and the sound is too good to miss."
Death.
She died on the morning of January 20, 2013, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, at the age of 69. Her cause of death is not yet known, and her family placed a request for an autopsy.
References.
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