Zilia L. Laje was born in Vedado, to the west of Havana, on Saturday, February 1st, 1941, an only child, and her father died when she was five. Her paternal grandmother's ancestors had arrived in Cuba in the 1580's. She attended a girls' municipal school. She went with her mother to live in New York in her teens for over five years. In Manhattan, she attended junior high school and took shorthand in English at a business school. They moved back to Havana, where she worked as export documentation clerk in a plate-glass international sales company in Vedado and attended the Vedado Professional School of Commerce for Business Accounting. She moved to Miami in July 1961, got her Associate in Arts degree in Business Administration at Miami-Dade Community College, New World Center on 2nd Avenue and worked as corporate banking assistant in a national banking corporation in Miami Springs for over 12 years. She has a son, who earned his Master of Science degree in Physics at FIU. She has travelled to Spain, England, Scotland, Andorra, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay and Bahamas. She enjoys writing historical fiction, and has published seven books, in English and in Spanish. Bibliography: 1. La cortina de bagazo, Editorial Guarina, Miami, May, 1995; 2. The Sugar Cane Curtain, Guarina Publishing, Miami, May, 2000; 3. Cartas son cartas, Editorial Guarina, Miami, April, 2001; 4. Love Letters in the Sand, Guarina Publishing, Miami, December, 2002; 5. Divagaciones, Editorial Guarina, Miami, August, 2003; 6. 100 Recetas de cocina tradicionales, Editorial Guarina, Miami, October, 2004; 7. Genealogía - Laje, Editorial Guarina, Miami, August, 2006; story "In Search of My Roots" in Anthology of PEN, 2010; stories "Escribir" and "Gajes del oficio" in Antología del Club Cultural Atena, 2006. She is a member of the Círculo de Cultura Panamericano, the Women’s National Book Association and Writers, in New York, and belonged to the now defunct International PEN Centre for Writers-in-Exile. She appears in the millennium edition of Albert N. Marquis' Who's Who in the South, the 2002 edition of Who's Who of Women, Writers' Directory of American Fiction Writers, Women's National Book Association's The Bookwoman, R. Bowker's Authors, Gale/Cengage Learning's The Writers Directory, Miami-Dade Community College alumni association's publication Alma Matters and in Red Mundial de Escritores en Español. She researched her family history going back on her maternal side to 1735 and she travelled to Lugo, Galicia, Spain, to meet the descendants of her paternal grandfather's sisters and visit his place of birth.

She won 1st prize of I Concurso Internacional de Biografías Octavio Paz of Club Cultural Atena de Miami in November 2005 for her biography of General Antonio Maceo. She won 3rd prize in photography of Writers’ Journal in November 2002, which is the cover of her book "Cartas son cartas". She exhibited her works at the Book Fair International of Miami from 1995 to 2005. She founded Cuban Writers of Miami in January 1997 with Jorge A. Alarcón and Julio A. Concepción.