Sonia Manzano

Sonia Manzano is a New York legend, television icon, and cultural trail-blazer. She played “Maria” on Sesame Street for more than four decades. Sonia also won more than a dozen Emmys for her work as a writer for the show. Writing is one of the many things that Sonia has been doing since stepping away from the small screen in 2015. She has a new book out today called Coming Up Cuban. It tells the stories of four young Cubans and how their lives changed following the 1959 revolution in Cuba.

Sonia Manzano spent more than four decades on Sesame Street. She joins “CBS Mornings” to talk about her new historical novel for pre-teens, "Coming Up Cuban."

If you are a child of the eighties, odds are you grew up watching Sesame Street, and know who "Maria" is. While the Puerto Rican South Bronx native actress, Sonia Manzano, is no longer hanging out with Big Bird, she is still making an impact on children everywhere.This time as the creator of Alma's Way, and even more recently lending her voice to the character of Granny Isa on the same PBS Kids show.

Sonia Manzano, who played Maria on Sesame Street for 44 years before leaving in 2015, makes her animated debut on Monday on the PBS Kids show Alma's Way. The actress plays Granny Isa in the program, which she created. "It's wonderful!" she enthuses about her first-ever animated role. "I never have to worry about what I'm gonna wear because animated characters never change their clothes. Every hair is in place!"

Update 4/28: Due to illness, Sonia Manzano will not be appearing at UAlbany on Saturday, April 30, 2022 as previously planned. The 4pm Creative Life Conversation at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center for which Manzano was to be the guest is canceled.The 7:30pm performance of Selected Shorts will take place as planned at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center. Actors Patricia Kalember (The Tick) and Bhavesh Patel (The Good Wife) will be joined by a third actor to be named shortly who will replace Manzano.

Sonia Manzano, the actor and author who played Maria for nearly five decades on "Sesame Street" will be the guest in this spring’s edition of The Creative Life: A Conversation Series at UAlbany, appearing at the Performing Arts Center at 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 30. She will be in conversation with WAMC's Joe Donahue. That evening, also at UAlbany, Manzano will perform as part of a Selected Shorts live event which will feature Manzano along with Patricia Kalember, and Bhavesh Patel.

(CNN) — Emilio Delgado, best known to generations of "Sesame Street" viewers as the patient and kind Luis, died last week at 81. Who better to memorialize him than the actress who worked alongside him for more than 40 years?. Sonia Manzano, who for decades played Luis' co-worker and...

'Our wedding presented flesh-and-blood Latinos wanting the same things out of life as other Americans.'

After starring on PBS's Sesame Street for forty-four years, Sonia Manzano thought her work in educational children's programming was done. PBS and Fred Rogers Productions, however, had different plans. Linda Simensky, until recently head of content for PBS KIDS, asked the Emmy-winning actress — who'd left Sesame Street in 2015 — if she would create a new animated children's program based on a Latinx family.

Above: Photo by David Attie/Courtesy Macrocosm Entertainment. Sesame Street was shot out a of a cannon in 1969, fueled by the social unrest of Black Americans tired of being treated as second-class citizens, young people marching on Washington to protest an unpopular war, farmworkers demanding decent labor conditions—the list of grievances that were being protested went on and on. It seemed everyone in the late 60s in America was in for a change.