Maria Alexandra Arana Blas

Alexandra Arana Blas received her Baccalaureate from the Hispanic Literature department at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 2016, and studied for a year (2014-2015) in the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm Universität Bonn, in the departments of English and Romance languages. 
In Peru, she won two prizes for her research about the female characters in the literary work of Mario Vargas Llosa, and the construction of female queer characters in the Peruvian literature of the 90’s. In the University of Pittsburgh, she won the LGBTQIA+ Endowed Research and Outreach Fund for her thesis project in 2024.
In 2022, she published the book En el jardín de lirios. El amor entre mujeres en la cultura pop asiática [In the Lilies Garden. The Love Between Women in Asian Pop Culture], where she analyzes different animes, mangas, manhwas, manhuas, and Peruvian mangas, and how they present lesbianism. 
Arana’s research interests include literature written by women and LGBTIAQ+ narratives. She also studies topics on girls’ culture, pop culture, Transpacific Studies, and subcultures in Peru.  
To visit Alexandra's personal website, please click here.