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El Gran Combo | La Comunidad Reads with Lupita Aquino

Angie Cruz, Caro De Robertis, Lilliam Rivera, Jaquira Díaz

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with this special edition of the La Comunidad Reads Book Club with Lupita Aquino - better known as Lupita.Reads with an engaging panel of Latinx writers.

Lupita Aquino invites you to join her new book club, La Comunidad Reads, an author-inclusive club that aims to build a space where Latine-authored books are magnified for all readers!

In this special Hispanic Heritage Month edition of the La Comunidad Reads Book Club, Lupita is convening a panel of incredible Latinx writers who make up the El Gran Combo. What is the El Gran Combo? In the midst of the pandemic, Latinx writers created this collective effort as a means to continue the support for bookstores and authors by building community through virtual fiestas/conversations. Featuring core author members, Angie Cruz, Caro De Robertis, Lilliam Rivera and Jaquira Díaz, this once-virtual event, now continues to make its rounds celebrating, amplifying and connecting Latine authors and readers. 

Join #LaComunidadReads as we welcome the core members of El Gran Combo, author series to DC for a  special conversation about community: how these authors approach writing about it through their books, how to form it, sustain it and nourish it for generations to come. Seating opens at 2:30 PM with vinyl selector Jovi bringing us salsa and Latin jazz vibes. Dancing welcomed!

About Angie Cruz

Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her most recent novel How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water (2022) is a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, shortlisted for The Aspen Words Literary Prize, winner of the Gold Medal, Latino Book Award/The Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Book Award, longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize and chosen for The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022 and The Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Fiction. Her novel, Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and shortlisted for The Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, a RUSA Notable book and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies including the Lighthouse Fellowship, Siena Art Institute, and the Macdowell Arts Colony. She’s published shorter works in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast and other journals. She's the founder and Editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix) and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh. She divides her time between Pittsburgh, New York and Turin.

About Caro De Robertis

A writer of Uruguayan origins, Caro De Robertis is the author of the forthcoming novel The Palace of Eros, as well as The President and the Frog, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; Cantoras, winner of a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice; The Gods of Tango, winner of a Stonewall Book Award; Perla; and the international bestseller The Invisible Mountain, which received Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize. Their books have been translated into seventeen languages and have received numerous other honors, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

De Robertis is also an award-winning translator of Latin American and Spanish literature, and editor of the anthology Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times. In 2017, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts named De Robertis on its 100 List of “people, organizations, and movements that are shaping the future of culture.” In 2022, they were an inaugural Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, gathering oral histories of queer and trans BIPOC elders in collaboration with Baldwin for the Arts and the Center for Oral History at Columbia University. De Robertis is an associate professor at San Francisco State University, and lives in Oakland, California with their two children.

About Lilliam Rivera

Lilliam Rivera is an award-winning author of the young adult novels Never Look Back, a Pura Belpré Honor winner, Dealing In Dreams, The Education of Margot Sanchez, as well as the Goldie Vance series for middle grade readers, and the stand-alone middle grade novel Barely Floating. Her latest works include a young adult science fiction novel, We Light Up the Sky, for Bloomsbury and a graphic novel for DC Comics, Unearthed: A Jessica Cruz Story, both named “Best Books of 2021” by Kirkus Review and School Library Journal.

The critically-acclaimed young adult novel Never Look Back, a retelling of the Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice set in New York by Bloomsbury is a 2021 Pura Belpre Honor book. NPR wrote of the novel: “Never Look Back signs its own love song to the world.” The multiple starred Never Look Back has been featured in Mashable, Entertainment Weekly, and Teen Vogue and was a Fall Indie Next List pick. Her other books include Dealing in Dreams, The Education of Margot Sanchez, and the middle grade series Goldie Vance: The Hocus-Pocus Hoax and Goldie Vance: The Hotel Whodunit.

Dealing In Dreams has been featured in Teen Vogue, PBS Books, Los Angeles Times, Bustle, among other outlets, and has received starred reviews by the School Library Journal and Booklist. Dealing In Dreams was also named “Best Book of the Year” by Seventeen magazine. The Education of Margot Sanchez was nominated for a 2019 Rhode Island Teen Book Award, a 2017 Best Fiction for Young Adult Fiction by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and has been featured on NPR, New York Times Book Review, New York magazine, MTV.com, and Teen Vogue, among others.

Lilliam is a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 Clarion alumni with a Leonard Pung Memorial Scholarship. She has also been awarded fellowships from PEN Center USA, A Room Of Her Own Foundation, and received a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Speculative Literature Foundation. She received honorable mention in the 2018 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award and in Bellevue Literary Review's 2014 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, selected by author Nathan Englander. Her short fiction and personal essays have appeared in various literary journals and publications including Tin House, New York Times, Buzzfeed Books, and The Washington Post. She has been a featured speaker in countless schools and book festivals throughout the United States and is on faculty at Hamline University.

Lilliam lives in Los Angeles.

About Jaquira Díaz

Born in Puerto Rico, Jaquira Díaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Library Reads pick, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize. Ordinary Girls was optioned for television and is currently in development at FX with Díaz as Co-Executive Producer.

The recipient of the Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction, the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from VCCA, two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Kenyon Review, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, Díaz has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, and The Fader, and her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2022, she held the Mina Hohenberg Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University’s MFA program and a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her second book, I Am Deliberate, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books. She lives in New York with her spouse, the writer Lars Horn, and she’s an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University.

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