Rita Gardner grew up on her expatriate family’s coconut farm in the Dominican Republic during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. In 2015, her memoir "The Coconut Latitudes" was awarded Gold Medals from two national publishing organizations in the category of Memoir. (The 2015 Benjamin Franklin Awards sponsored by IBPA, and the 2015 Next Generation Indie Awards.) It was also listed in "Best of 2014 in Expat Books" by The Displaced Nation, an international blog for creative expatriates worldwide. She is also a contributor to a new collection "The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey" (2016). In addition, she is featured in "Wandering in Andalusia: The Soul of Southern Spain", a travel anthology in the award-winning series published by Wanderland Writers. (Publish date: December 2016). Other essays, articles, and poems have appeared in literary journals, and travel magazines.
