Throughout her career Ms.Ojito has received several awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editor's writing award for best foreign reporting in 1999 for a series of articles about life in Cuba, and a shared Pulitzer for national reporting in 2001 for a New York Times series of articles about race in America.

Ms. Ojito has taught journalism at New York University, Columbia University and the University of Miami. She is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University and of the mid-career master's degree program at Columbia.

Her work has been included in several anthologies including To Mend the World: Women Reflect on 9/11 (White Pine Press, 2002), Written into History: Pulitzer Prize Reporting of the Twentieth Century from The New York Times (Henry Holt and Co., 2001), By Heart/De Memoria (Temple University Press, 2003), and How Race is Lived in America (Times Books/Henry Holt and Co., 2001).

Ms. Ojito, who was born in Cuba, came to the United States in the 1980 Mariel boatlift when she was 16. Her first book, Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus, was published last year by The Penguin Press. In January of this year, she joined the full time faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University as a visiting professor. She continues to write for The New York Times from New York, where she lives with her husband, Arturo Villar, and their three boys.