Marta Maria Darby is an avid blogger, business owner, cook, graphic designer, scrapbooker, photographer and homemaker. Born in Havana, she fled Cuba with her parents, brother, and 4 sisters when she was just 5-years-old. Her family lived in Miami for the first 3 years of exile, and then moved across the country to the “left coast” and settled in California. Marta’s blog, My Big Fat Cuban Family, is a daily destination for hundreds of Cubans worldwide. Each day she weaves stories and anecdotes about her passionate and sometimes strange Cuban family, their delectable Cuban food, and other crazy Cuban-American adventures. She publishes her delicious recipes every other week on Babalu Blog – one of the most popular Cuban sites online. Marta lives with her husband, Eric, and 4 children, in Southern California, in their cozy home with a white picket fence. Marta Tweets @smrtqbn

Carrie Ferguson Weir may have a completely Anglo name, but do not be fooled. The pica pica of her Cuban ancestors powers her Spanglish spirit. Carrie __ or “Caridad!” when her mother is ticked __ grew up in Miami in a big tribe of Cuban relatives who left the island nation between 1957 and 1961. She is a journalist by education and profession, a career inspired by the powerful and colorful stories her own family is known to tell. In 2005, Carrie left daily journalism to spend more time with her young daughter, Maria, and to co-launch Los Pollitos Dicen (The Little Chicks Say), a boutique line of Spanish baby and toddler t-shirts. Creating the business also led to Carrie’s personal site, Bilingual in the Boonies; a second t-shirt line, Chichi & Flaco; gigs doing copy writing and public relations for small businesses; and until recently, writing a weekly column for Parenting.com. Carrie lives in a little town outside of Nashville with her husband and 5-year-old daughter. Carrie honors her Cuban heritage by regularly dousing the house with pine-scented cleanser and her daughter with Agustin Reyes colonia de violetas. Twitter con Carrie at @CarrieFWeir and @LosPollitos.

Editors emeritus

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a first generation Spanish-American poet  and writer. She was born in Madrid to a Spanish father an American mother and raised between Madrid and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In one country she ate manchego and chorizo de Pamplona bocadillos, in the  other bologney and Kraft singles sandwiches- diagonally sliced.  True to her hybrid nature, she loved them both. Violeta graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Spanish Literature from Duquesne University, where she also received minors in English Literature and Education.  Post-graduation, her education was directed in the Spanish spirit of the “autodidacta,” incorporating study in various fields, in two languages, to the end of informing her writing career; in other words: she gave herself an excuse to spend her days learning more about sonnet forms, mosaics, the lambada, the Manzanares river, the Arabic influence on Spanish language and architecture, triangles, Godzilla… and many other random but fascinating topics. In the last few years, Violeta’s poetry and prose have appeared in dozens of venues, including Cicada, Soleado, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tattoo Highway and the literary anthologies The Maternal is Political (Seal Press, 2008) and Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering (Wyatt-MacKenzie, 2009).  She also published 13 installments as the “Multi-Culti Mami” columnist for Literary Mama, and worked as a contributing blogger for The Latin Baby Book Club, and a Book Reviewer for RainbowKids Magazine. Violeta lives in Pennsylvania with her American husband, three Guatemalan-born children, and two Welsh Corgi dogs, all of whom get her into lios, listen to her disparates, and fill her with ilusion at her beautiful hybrid life. Violeta on Twitter is @violeta_ink.

Carla Molina Martins spends her days in a corporate America cubicle and her nights pursuing her passion for writing about parenthood.  She writes about her experience as a Latina mom for Latina magazine at The Mami Diaries.  She also writes for her favorite local maternity store, Bellani Maternity, on anything from childbirth to discipline to breastfeeding.  Carla is the proud mami of two little girls who, like her, will grow up “on the hyphen of being Cuban-American, some days feeling more Cubana and others more Americana.  Born to a Filipina mom and a Cuban father, Carla was raised by her abuelito and his family in New Jersey where she was often called “La Chinita”.  She moved to New England to study philosophy and hasn’t left since.  She takes every opportunity to share her culture with her daughters from raising them bilingual to salsa dancing in the mornings to dousing them in Violetas to adorning them with an azavache.  You can keep up with Carla at her personal blog, MamaHeartsBaby, and twitter with her at @MamaHeartsBaby.