Marie Arana is writer-at-large for the Washington Post. She had been editor in chief of Book World, the literary review section of the Washington Post. Arana has written several books. Her most recent volume is "Lima Nights," a novel published in January, 2009. She also wrote "Cellophane," a satirical novel set in the Peruvian Amazon, published in 2006, and was a finalist for the John Sargent First Novel Prize. In 2001, she released a memoir about her bicultural childhood, "American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood," which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, as well as the PEN/Memoir Award. She has written introductions for many books, among them a National Geographic book of aerial photographs of South America, "Through the Eyes of the Condor," and, more recently, a book about Machu Picchu, "Stone Offerings."