Ed Vega - A Prolific Author

A Prolific Author

Vega died on August 26, 2008 from a possible thrombosis at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York City.

At the time of his death, Vega had completed the novel How That Dirty Rotten Charlie Maisonet Turned Me into a Puerto Rican Sex Freak and was finishing the story collection A Place of Remembrance on an Island Called Regret and the nonfiction book Spic, Writing Under the Threat of Censorship in the United States: A Jeremiad.

Amongst the many memorials and remembrances in his name, the New York Times obituary hailed Vega's honesty and his "picaresque, combustive and sometimes flamboyantly comic expressions of the Puerto Rican experience in New York’s multicultural maelstrom." Another remembrance, by David Gonzalez of the New York Times, stated that "his novels captured the crazy glory of this city and its people, with jazzy riffs and elegant solos that flowed with rhythm. His words could dazzle, amuse and even infuriate."