Oakland, CA–July 10, 2009. Mills College alumna Belinda Perez has received a Fulbright Award to study and teach in the Czech Republic.

Perez received her BA in English Literature in 2007. She is one of two Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship recipients to go the Czech Republic for 2009–10.

Her 10-month tenure will be spent in Lipník nad Bečvou, a small town of about 8,500 people in southeastern Czech Republic, where she will teach English at the local high school.

Perez said her interest in the Czech Republic was first piqued in high school when she read Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She eventually became interested in other Czech writers, the Czech New Wave of the 1960s, as well as the history of the country.

Perez will also pursue her research interests on her favorite writer Bohumil Hrabal, a Czech writer of the 1960s, and his influence on Czech writers today.

"Hrabal is beloved in the Czech Republic," she said. "They've even come up with a specific word to describe his terribly unique writing style: Hrabalovstina, which I would describe as sort of like a stream of consciousness, but more conversational. His writing is like sitting down for a drink with an amazing, witty, and dirty storyteller."

Perez hopes to convey to her Czech students the diversity of American literature and writers such as Philip Roth, who she said is for "anyone who has ever dealt with issues like being a first-generation American, a minority, wanting to be an artist, or struggling to figure out who they are."

The Fulbright program is the U.S. government's flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The program is administered by the Institute of International Education.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is named one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, one of the Best 368 Colleges by the Princeton Review, and ranks 75th among America's best colleges by Forbes.com. Visit us at www.mills.edu.

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