Alisa Solomon excavates the fragmented evidence of María Irene Fornés’s intimate relationship with noted public intellectual Susan Sontag. Arguing that the two came together at a pivotal time in their lives, Solomon demonstrates how Fornés and Sontag galvanized each other as they embarked on their disparate professional careers as writers, producing a persistent synergy in spite of their radically different backgrounds and career trajectories. Carefully charting how Fornés and Sontag cryptically acknowledged and deliberately effaced their history as romantic and creative partners, Solomon argues the relationship was foundational to both writers as not so much a matter of mutual influence as confluence rippled through both of their careers long after their romantic relationship ended.

Lillian Manzor evinces the previously unrecognized continuities in Fornés’s material relationship to Cuba, offering new insights into her life, her work, and even her name. Because María Irene Fornés rarely wrote about Cuba, her connections to the island are usually characterized in the scholarship solely based on her place of birth, rather than on her lifelong dynamic material relationship to Cuba. Manzor argues that Fornés’s Cubanity (in contrast to the Cubanness of those who came to the US after 1959) is informed by Fornés’s heretofore undocumented direct engagement with and cultural and familial ties to the island, including her connections to Cuba, to her family that stayed on the island, to Cuban theater, her travels to Cuba, and her interest in the rhythms of Spanish and Cuban Spanish.

A critical overview of the lost, unfinished, or incomplete works that María Irene Fornés left behind. Detailing those works ripe for reconstruction or recuperation (Evelyn Brown and The House at 27 Rue de Fleurus) alongside those caught in limbo (The Office and The Widow), this contribution offers extended attention to the methodology of researching and restoring works that exhibit the hallmarks of Fornesian playwriting and merit wider recognition.