Ava de Cenizas:

My mother spent her formative years in Havana, Cuba; my father in Beirut, Lebanon. They bequeathed to me the love of the written word and an insatiable interest in history – the deader, the better.

While at the University of Virginia, a literature professor praised me over a foray into fiction, but I lacked the courage to follow up on his invitation. After a few years on archaeological digs, I put aside my graph paper and angst-ridden poetry to settle into the practical career of the law.

The law always looks over its shoulder to the receding past. Not long ago, references to Shakespeare and the Bible were de rigueur for a closing argument. But I never quite gave up on that praise for fiction. Late at night, I’d try a line here and a few pages there after wrestling with res ipsa loquitor or another “issue of material fact.”

In the meantime, as the cliché tells us, the years flew by: marriage; two beautiful girls; thirty in the rear-view mirror; and a head-on collision with forty. Thumbing through an exposition on early Judaism,  I met Rabbi Hillel the Elder. The wise man asked me, “And if not now, when?”

Now, of course, is the only answer.  

-        Ava de Cenizas

BA, Archaeology, University of Virginia.

JD, University of Arizona.