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.
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.
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.
José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, author of "Timshel" Historia de Gladiadores" and "Los Pecios y Los Naufragos" is well-known around the island of Cuba as Yoss, a notable champion of science fiction and a leader of rock and roll.
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.
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.
Cuban-born and New York-raised author Cristina García was inadvertently nudged toward writing by her diary-prying mother. However, it was her own investigation of expression and culture that led her flourishing career and the creation of her many grabbing works, including "King of Cuba."
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."
When Spanish-born author Maria E. Andreu was five years old, she wrote what she thought was original stories. In retrospect, "Sleeping Beauty" as told by her wasn't quite an original composition. However, the young adult novel, "The Secret Side of Empty," which tells a candid and hard-boiled account of immigration, certainly is an original and powerful work.
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.
Mexican-American social entrepreneur and the award-winning author of "Seven for the Revolution" Rudy Ruiz depicts yearning and suffering on the page with purpose and intrigue, converting backstory and conversations into thunderous, nuanced stories. And employs his social interests to create a more conscious, original story.
The quaint Central Valley-located California town Dinuba, with its unchanging landmarks and the conversational closeness of its residents, is a source of creative stimuli for professor and author Manuel Muñoz.
Helena Maria Viramontes, critically acclaimed author and professor, reinforces the belief that fiction can rise from experience and personal understanding, amass amid the memories of generations of Chicano families raised in East Los Angeles, and grow around the fervor of familial love that only words can attempt to capture.
"Perla," "The Invisible Mountain" and "The Gods of Tango" are fictional fragments of who Robertis is as a writer. Her attraction to exploring the histories of silenced, forgotten or marginalized voices is rooted in a need to offer underserved communities a place in literature. This is why she's chosen to dedicate her life to creating stories that have been kept private, but will resonate with the public.
In this edition of Latin Post's "Palabras" series, the acclaimed, award-winning Peruvian-born Chilean-American author Isabel Allende reveals her journey from journalist to acclaimed writer, and discusses relationships and how magical realism inspires her writing.
Chicana novelist and poet Ana Castillo who coined the term "Xicanisma" at a time when the lives of Chicanas were finally being formalized into writing.
Yo-yoing between birthplace Bogota, Colombia and New York City since the age of 18 sparked an insatiable need for author Angela Lang to travel. When she wasn't able to satisfy the urge to travel physically, she did so mentally: happily ingesting highly-imaginative Colombian literature and sauntering toward the great entryway of world creation, keeping one leg in the world of journalism the other in the world of literature
José Luis Vilson, author of "This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education," and an applauded math educator for middle school children in Inwood / Washington Heights, New York City, spoke with Latin Post about his narrative work, which touches upon his role as a student, educator, father, husband, advocate for children and activist.
Puerto Rican-American author Anjanette Delgado wanted to know how and why love turns into hate when she wrote "The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho." The question was formed when she was being raised by her mother and an abusive and sadistic father in a Puerto Rican "caserío" and it persisted even after she, her sister and her mother escaped to New York City during the late 1970s.
Buenos Aires, Argentina was home to author-illustrator Lila Quintero Weaver until age five, when she and her family immigrated to a small town in Alabama during 1961, in the heart of Alabama's Black Belt. "Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White" is an ode to the staying power of that family history and recognition that the ability to read and manipulate language is an "amazing privilege."
