Cuban-American author Cristina Garcia will address topics as universal as cultural identity and family relations when she reads from her two novels at DePaul University Oct. 29 in the Schmitt Academic Center, 2320 N. Kenmore Ave., Room 154, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Garcia, who resides in Southern California, shed her life as a reporter and bureau chief for Time magazine in 1992 when she published her first novel, "Dreaming in Cuban," to universal acclaim. The novel spans three generations in the lives of a Cuban family, one branch of which flees Cuba during the revolution. The novel was nominated for a National Book Award.

Her most recent novel, "The Aguiero Sisters," centers on two half-sisters – one in Havana and one in Miami -- from a family that is also fractured by the Cuban revolution. The sisters are separated not just geographically, but by a series of family secrets that Garcia has said reflect a Cuban tradition of social repression.

Born in Cuba and raised in Queens, N.Y.; Garcia, 40, attended Columbia University and worked for Time magazine in New York and Miami. She settled in the Los Angeles area in 1986, where she is raising her 6-year-old daughter, Pilar.

Garcia’s lecture and reading are free and open to the public. Guest parking is available in the Sheffield Parking Facility at 2328 N. Sheffield Ave. for $2.

The DePaul University Honors Program, in conjunction with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Center for Latino Research is sponsoring this program.