“I Write about People Whose Lives Are on Fire”: A Conversation with Sandra Cisneros, by Emily Doyle

Interviews   Sandra Cisneros’s success as a poet, short-story writer, novelist, and essayist is tied to her determination to write about others with awareness and love. Her work is populated by powerful people—powerful in their pain, joy, and hunger for home. This fall, Cisneros’s poetry collection Woman Without Shame will be published in English by Knopf and in Spanish by Vintage Español. We spoke ahead of UC Riverside’s forty-fifth annual Writers Week, at which Cisneros received the Lifetime Achievement Award. As we settled into our conversation by making not-so-small talk, Cisneros commented: “We have a very profound connection with landscapes, and when we’re born into the wrong landscape, we feel it.” When I told her that’s what makes me nervous about the idea of leaving Earth for another planet, her response captured the service-minded spirit with which she’s lived and written: “Yes, absolutely. I feel like traveling south has been a return for me to an ancient DNA that wanted to come back. The people that ventured far away and couldn’t come back—I came back for them.” Cisneros’s writing offers an opportunity to return to ourselves and the places from which we came. Emily Doyle: The concept of home seems to inform much of your work. In your memoir, A House of My Own, you say you knew “little about how women writers lived” and “even less about working-class writers.” What has living like a writer meant to you, and has your... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'

[ World Literature Today | 2022-04-01 16:29:13 UTC ]
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'We've always had to battle complacency': Authors Ijeoma Oluo and Emmanuel Acho in conversation

Antiracist author Ijeoma Oluo, whose latest book is 'Mediocre,' joins Emmanuel Acho, author of 'Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man,' for a frank talk. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-11-24 15:16:34 UTC ]
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Douglas Stuart on Writing in Secret

The Shuggie Bain author grew up in a culture that discouraged boys from reading. His debut novel just won the Booker Prize. The post Douglas Stuart on Writing in Secret appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2020-11-20 21:30:09 UTC ]
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Advice to the New Guard: A Conversation with Translator Jessica Cohen by Veronica Esposito

Interviews Since 2003, Jessica Cohen has published over twenty books translated from Hebrew to English. Among other honors, she shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with author David Grossman for her translation of Grossman’s A Horse Walks... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2020-11-20 16:36:29 UTC ]
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Writing Woman to Woman, In Faith

Women writing in the spirituality space bring candor, authority, and humor to titles that challenge, celebrate, console, and empower women. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-11-20 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Yale University Press Launches Black Lives Series

In early 2022, Yale University Press will debut Black Lives, a series of brief biographies of Black individuals who profoundly shaped history. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-11-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Kamala Harris added to line-up for Little People, Big Dreams series

The Quarto Group's Frances Lincoln Children’s Books imprint has added US vice-president-elect Kamala Harris to its Little People, Big Dreams list for 2021.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-15 14:59:22 UTC ]
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Surveillance, reeducation and the Office of Honesty: How China tames its people

Two books examine Beijing’s efforts to control first Tibet and now Uighur Muslims. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-11-13 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Your next book recommendation will come from a bot living under the Bixby Creek Bridge.

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[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-12 16:50:30 UTC ]
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Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell review – virtuosic venting

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[ The Guardian | 2020-11-11 09:00:33 UTC ]
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Children's books eight times as likely to feature animal main characters than BAME people

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[ The Guardian | 2020-11-11 00:01:23 UTC ]
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Ruth Coker Burks | 'I wanted the [victims] to be counted, to have their lives matter'

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-09 02:29:37 UTC ]
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Bryan Washington Is Writing for Himself

Much of the change that needs to occur in American publishing needs to happen on the masthead front. The whole thing needs an overhaul, but I’m thinking about lasting, substantial, generational change. The post Bryan Washington Is Writing for Himself appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2020-11-06 11:00:40 UTC ]
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L J Ross launches Read, Write, Walk North East

Author L J Ross is to launch an arts initiative, offering community grants, promoting literacy and encouraging tourism in The North East.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-04 19:31:39 UTC ]
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Raven Leilani | 'I wanted to write a story about a young black woman who is unvarnished on the page'

"The first time we have sex, we are both fully clothed, at our desks during working hours, bathed in blue computer light.” So begins Luster, the extraordinary début novel from American author Raven Leilani, which has caused a sensation in the US and deserves to do the same here. The... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-01 23:03:04 UTC ]
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The Dark History of Eastern California: A Conversation with Kendra Atleework

FEW WRITERS MANAGE to capture the essence of the California that exists beyond the images typically offered up by film and television — palm trees, beaches, gridlock, Hollywood, Kardashians; images the rest of the country seems so willing to accept about us “out here.” Kendra Atleework’s new... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-11-01 18:00:10 UTC ]
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The 20 reads book people actually want this year

Check out our 2020 holiday book gift guide for the best non-fiction and fiction picks for literary enthusiasts on your list. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-10-30 15:00:05 UTC ]
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On Choice, Children, and Womanhood: A Conversation with Christa Parravani

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[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-29 19:00:52 UTC ]
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Exhausting the Vein of Realism: A Conversation with Lynne Sharon Schwartz

I DON’T KNOW when I first became aware of Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s writing, but it was probably sometime between 1980, when Raymond Carver lauded her on the basis of her National Book Award–nominated first novel Rough Strife, and 1989, when Sven Birkerts raved about Schwartz’s PEN/Faulkner... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-29 15:00:49 UTC ]
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Evaristo curates new series Black Britain: Writing Back for Hamish Hamilton

Bernardine Evaristo is curating a new series of lost or hard-to-find books, now rediscovered, by black writers who wrote about black Britain and the diaspora across the last century.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-28 09:32:56 UTC ]
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