Edgardo Vega Yunqué
1936-2008

He was born May 20, 1936, a date to be commemorated because he was truly a great writer and contributed to a transnational, transcultural body of literature that is so much a part of what New York City really is all about.

(excerpted from The Daily News) The author of 17 novels, who was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico, and lived alone in Brooklyn, died at Lutheran Hospital on Aug. 25, said his agent Tom Colchie. Ed Vega Yunqué was “a great American writer as well as a great Puerto Rican writer,” he added. Vega Yunqué’s novels, such as ‘Blood Fugues’ and ‘Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow Into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle,’ are modern classics.” His first novel ‘The Comeback’ was published in 1985.

Ed Vega Yunqué moved to New York from Puerto Rico in the mid 1940s. He was the stepfather of singer Suzanne Vega. The feisty writer was the director of the Clemente Soto Velez from 1993 to 2000.

His last novel was a comic false memoir about a Jewish woman who meets a Puerto Rican Romeo and falls in love. It had been tentatively titled “Rebecca Horowitz, Puerto Rican Sex Freak” but publication was cancelled by the publisher recently, said Colchie, who’d been trying to find another publisher.

FUNERAL SERVICES for Edgardo Vega Yunqué, 1936-2008

Monday, Sept 15, 2008
6:00pm-8:00pm
Soka Gakkai International-USA
7 East 15th Street
New York, NY 10003
212-727-7715

A TRIBUTE TO EDGARDO VEGA YUNQUE

Saturday, November 15, 3PM – 7PM
PRdream/MediaNoche
1355 Park Avenue, Corner Store
at East 102nd Street in Manhattan

A non-stop, ongoing reading of Ed Vega’s “The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle” — Magical Realism comes to Loisaida (and now El Barrio)! Bring your copy!

We are looking for readers who would like to sign up to seriously work on reading for ten to fifteen minutes. Please contact Judy at escalona@prdream.com.