Lois Parkinson Zamora teaches at the University of Houston in the departments of English, History, and Art. She, with co-author Wendy B. Faris, is one of the world's pre-eminent scholars on the impact of magical realism on literature. Zamora's main area of specialization is contemporary fiction in the Americas and her many publications include Writing the Apocalypse: Historical Vision in Contemporary U.S and Latin American Fiction,Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America l866-1994 and The Usable Past: The Imagination of History in Recent Fiction of the Americas, and she co-edited with Wendy B. Faris Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Zamora served as Dean of the College of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Communication at the University of Houston, 1996-99.