Puerto Rican-born novelist Margy Millet has long been attracted to contemporary romance, classic Hollywood endings, and the creation of paranormal worlds. So far, the author of "Daughter's Revenge" and "My Vampire, My King" has only published three books that employ these elements, but there are many more novels planned.
Richard Blanco, author of "City of a Hundred Fires" and "The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood," is "a reluctant poet" who habitually seizes the adoration of the American public with winning, relatable poetry. With a great deal of success under his belt already, the 47-year-old inaugural poet is just getting started.
Jennine Capó Crucet, author of the celebrated short story collection "How to Leave Hialeah" and the exceptional novel "Make Your Home Among Strangers," is humble, modest, methodical and hilarious -and puts all of that into her work.
Brooklyn-born author Theresa Varela ("Nights of Indigo Blue" and "Covering the Sun With My Hand") took the scenic route to finding her identity as an author. A psychiatric nurse practitioner by day and an engrossed novelist by night, Varela's characters whisper to her, and inspire their own making.
Yadhira Gonzalez-Taylor, attorney and author of "Martina Finds a Shiny Coin" and "Martina and the Wondrous Waterfall," uses her "bifurcated upbringing" to create stories that preserve and hearten Puerto Rican culture.
Dominican and Puerto Rican New York City educator and acclaimed author Peggy Robles-Alvarado sets standards and defies odds. Her collections of poetry, "Conversations With My Skin" and "Homenaje a las guerreras" (Homage to the Warrior Women), which are heavily marked thoughts on identity, sensuality and spirituality, prove this.
Alma P. Rodriguez, former educator and author of "Los Marmolejos: The Dance of the Alleles Vol. 1" is a novelist who is committed to sharing rich stories about family history, and passionate tales about the origin of identity.
Jennifer De Leon, educator and author of "Home Movies" and "The White Space" has always loved stories. Since toddlerhood, she's loved listening to stories, writing them and telling them, and while her parents weren't educators or writers, they were great storytellers, who easily articulated warm stories about their home nation, Guatemala.
Joe Cepeda, the Los Angeles-born illustrator of awarding-winning picture books, is also an author, a former engineer and a masterful pictorial storyteller.
Daniel Gutierrez is a motivational speaker and the author of the "Stepping Into Greatness: Success Is Up To You" and "Fifty Lessons I Learned on my Path to Peace and Tranquility." Beyond that, the humorous, charismatic and painstakingly honest thought leader has made openness and transformation his life's work.
Sergio Troncoso, author of "From This Wicked Patch of Dust" and "The Nature of Truth," was born to a legacy of storytellers, writers and educators, and he was obliged to follow suit and tell incredible truths and stories through writing --even if his grandfather warned him against it.
New York Times Bestselling Author Pam Muñoz Ryan has penned more than 25 phenomenal books, including "Esperanza Rising," "Becoming Naomi Leon" and "Echo." The incomparable author has been putting her pen to work for over 20 years, and she still has plenty of magical, edifying and charming tales to tell.
Reyna Grande, author of the critically acclaimed memoir "The Distance Between Us," endured a desolate and deprived early life, filled with abandonment. But decades later, the award-winning author has used her story as a tool to transform her life.
Brando Skyhorse, author of acclaimed works "The Madonnas of Echo Park" and "Take This Man," has a great deal to say about passing, fiction and capturing one's own story. Armed with an original voice and a layered history involving the catch and release of identities, he has an interesting story to tell.
Sheila Sheeran, Spanish-language Puerto Rican author of "¿Te acostarías conmigo?" and "Tu Peor Error: Materia Oscura," was motivated toward authorship by her cumulative life experiences. Nearly 40-years-old, the daytime marketing executive borrows from her own life to fuel her provocative romantic fiction.
Paul Andreas Wunderlich, Guatemalan-born and Texas-dwelling author of the Spanish-language fantasy series "Saga de una Flama Creciente," is a man of medicine and literature.
Born high in the Andes Mountains in Quito, Ecuador at an altitude of 9,000 feet above sea level, author Cecilia Velástegui has found success as an author of adult and children's books due to her extensive travel, her chameleon nature and "the serendipity of the Spanish tongue."
Born in NYC and raised amid the Germanic culture of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, author Daniel Cubias was considered very exotic. He was the only Latino friend to countless kids, and his cousins were the only other Latinos he knew. That static upbringing helped to shape Cubias' perspective as a writer, sharpen his attentiveness to the progress of U.S. Latinos and urge him to examine his cultural identity.
Colombian-born author Adriana Páramo left her native country 23 years ago. Geographical exploration and global wandering shaped the way she sees the world and the way she describes it, and this has been made abundantly clear by her books, "My Mother's Funeral" and "Looking for Esperanza."
Angela Cervantes, author of "Gaby, Lost and Found," has employed her love of writing to pen the influence of friendship, animals, immigration and hope in the lives of children, by use of diverse and strong characters.
Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, author, academic, unapologetic border-crosser and ex-DJ, was "made in Mexico but born in the U.S," or so he tells his students. His varied identities --Chicano, border-crosser and voracious reader-- has helped to shape his life as a writer.
