Dr. Faris is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is the author of Carlos Fuentes and Labyrinths of Language: Symbolic Landscape and Narrative Design in Modern Fiction, as well as co-editor, with Dr. Lois Parkinson Zamora, of Magical Realism: Theory, History and Community. She has recently completed a seminal work on literary magical realism titled Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative.