In this guest post, author Monica Brown shares the magic that is passed down through generations of women in her family in the form of creativity and dreams. El cuarto turquesa / The Turquoise Room will be published September 27 and is available for pre-order now.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Dear Readers
The Mysterious Case of Writing with Grace: A Guest Post by Guadalupe García McCall
In this guest post, author Guadalupe García McCall unravels the personal and shared traumas and experiences of women that inspired her newest novel. Echoes of Grace will be published August 16 and is available for pre-order now.
Continue readingA Tale of Two Crescent Cities: A Guest Post by Chris Clarkson
In this guest post, author Chris Clarkson discusses his inspirations for his debut novel and the duality of its setting, the city of New Orleans. That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street will be published June 28 and is available for pre-order now.
Continue readingBehind the History: A Guest Post by Shirley Reva Vernick
In this guest post, author Shirley Reva Vernick shares her personal connections to historical events and how they led her to write about history in her novels. Her latest historical fiction book entitled The Sky We Shared will be published June 7 and is available for pre-order now.
Continue readingArt from the Everyday: A Guest Post by Alison Goldberg
In this guest post, author Alison Goldberg explores how found objects can reveal their stories when turned into art, just as El Anatsui’s sculptures reveal the stories of the objects that they are made from. Bottle Tops: The Art of El Anatsui will be published on June 14, 2022 and is available for preorder.
Continue readingPredicting the Pandemic in Nobody’s Pilgrims: A Guest Post by Sergio Troncoso
In this guest post, author Sergio Troncoso reflects on writing a pandemic story before the pandemic and the many themes of his latest novel, including “the border beyond the border,” survival, identity, and more. Nobody’s Pilgrims is available for purchase now.
Continue readingFinding My Accent: A Guest Post by Yasmín Ramírez
In this guest post, author Yasmín Ramírez describes how embracing her name helped embrace where she comes from and who she has become, tilde and all. Yasmín is a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Author Fellow and recipient of the Woody and Gayle Hunt-Aspen Institute Fellowship Award. Her debut memoir ¡Ándale Prieta! will be published April 19 and is available for preorder.
Continue readingBecoming a “Real” Writer: A Guest Post by Monica Zepeda
In this guest post, author Monica Zepeda talks about her winding journey to becoming what she always was all along: a “real” writer. Monica is the 2019 winner of the New Visions Award for her debut young adult novel, Boys of the Beast, which will be published April 12 and is available for preorder.
Continue readingAll the Bilinguals I’ve Been: A Guest Post by Author Alessandra Narváez Varela
In this guest post, author Alessandra Narváez Varela talks about her journey growing into her bilingualism and how that grew into her latest novel, Thirty Talks Weird Love.
Diversifying Classic Literature in the Classroom: A Student’s Perspective
In this blog post by Kiana Low, our Lee & Low summer intern, she shares the need for educators to create space for more diverse, contemporary books and voices to balance the “classics.”
The classics. If you attended high school in the United States, your mind may immediately go to Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, or maybe even Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose The Scarlet Letter has been a Puritan warning against female sexuality for nearly two centuries. These are the old guard of high school English classics—literature included in reading lists for generations. There are also “modern classics”—you may think of J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, and John Steinbeck.