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A book club with Los Bookis Podcast and the Mt. Pleasant Library to celebrate and uplift Queer Latine authors and stories.
Join our community of readers for a bimonthly book club where we will discuss titles centering queer Latine voices and stories with library staff and Los Bookis, a podcast for queer Latine bookworms. This space will center queer Latine authors and celebrate storytelling, community, and conversation.
Los Bookis January Meetup
Thursday, January 8, 2026
6:15 PM – 7:45 PM
The Dance and the Fire
Daniel Saldaña París
About the Book: The Dance and the Fire
In this gripping and atmospheric new novel by acclaimed Mexican writer Daniel Saldaña París, three friends - forever bound by the erotic and complicated flames of their adolescence - reunite in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a city now surrounded by wildfires and strained by an ecstatic dancing plague.
After years apart, the trio returns to the place where a charged high school love triangle shaped their coming-of-age. The claustrophobic fires draw out old memories and force them to confront their present: the entanglements of friendship and desire, the distance and weight of early discoveries of sexuality, complex relationships with parents, and the struggle for artistic purpose.
Meanwhile, forces of chaos simmer in the background. As the fires consume the landscape, one friend begins choreographing an ecstatic dance inspired by German expressionist Mary Wigman and the medieval Danse Macabre. What begins as a coping ritual for emotional turmoil and climate anxiety grows into something overpowering, blurring the boundary between reality and myth. Mysterious energies awaken, and the friends find themselves pulled into a universe that is increasingly turbulent, uncanny, and unstable.
About the Author: Daniel Saldaña París
Daniel Saldaña París (born 1984) is a Mexican poet, essayist, and novelist. He gained acclaim for his debut novel En medio de extrañas víctimas (2013) and its follow-up El nervio principal (2018), published in English as Among Strange Victims (2015) and Ramifications (2020) by Charco Press and Coffee House Press. He has also published volumes of poetry. In 2015, he was included in the anthology México20: New Voices, Old Traditions (Pushkin Press), celebrating the best young Mexican writers. In 2017, he was chosen as one of the Bogotá39, a selection of the best young Latin American writers under forty. In 2022 he became a fellow at the Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars of the New York Public Library. As of 2024, he is married to the writer Catherine Lacey.
What We’re About:
📖 Centering queer Latine authors in every book we read
💬 Engaging discussions, creative activities, and community connection
Who Can Join:
Everyone interested in reading and uplifting queer Latine voices!
