Marianella Machado was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and studied at the Conservatorio de Musica
José Ángel Lamas. She later continued her studies in composition with William Banch, and in 1981 she attended
Indiana University School of Music in
Bloomington on a Venezuenlan government scholarship, graduating with bachelor's and master's degrees in composition. Marchado returned to Venezuela, where she began work as a music teacher and composer. From 1987-88 she was a research assistant at the
Rómulo Gallegos Center for Latin American Studies in Caracas. From 1989-93 she attended the
University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music, working as a teaching assistant, and graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1993. In 1994 Machado began pursuing an interest in Spanish as second language and Hispanic literature. She attended the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of the University of Cincinnati on assistantship where she graduated with a Master of Arts in 1996 and a PhD in Hispanic Literature in 1998. From 1998-2003 she worked as a professor at the
Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas. In August 2003 she took a position as Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Humanities at
Eastern Kentucky University in the United States. ==Works==