Irene Vilar is an editor, a literary agent and an author of several books dealing with national and generational trauma and women's reproductive rights. Born in Puerto Rico, Vilar is the granddaughter of Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebrón, who participated in an assault on the United States House of Representatives in 1954. Her work A Memoir of Family Secrets was a Philadelphia Inquirer and Detroit Free Press notable book of the year, a finalist for the Mind Book of the Year Award and the Latino Book Award. Her 2009 memoir Impossible Motherhood won the 2010 IPPY gold medal for best memoir/autobiography. The book revealed that the author had 15 abortions in 17 years. Vilar received death threats after the publication.Vilar worked as acquisitions editor for Women and Jewish studies at Syracuse University Press and from 2002 to 2005 served as founder and series editor of The Americas book series published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Currently she is series editor of the Americas at Texas Tech University Press.Vilar is literary agent for Vilar Creative Agency, and co-agent in the U.S. for Ray-Gude Mertin Literary Agency, an agency specializing in Spanish, Latin American, and Portuguese authors representing such notable writers as Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago. Vilar is a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow.

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