Susan Straight is a Riverside, California, native who proudly still works and lives in her hometown. Highwire Moon was her fifth book, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award.
One reviewer described Straight this way:
One of America’s gutsiest writers … a polyglot with an astonishing ear for how people really talk in places we hardly remember they are living.
Here’s Straight doing a guerrilla reading from Highwire Moon at Tia Chucha’s 6th Annual Celebrating Words Festival.
Posted in GuerrillaReads
Tagged author, guerrilla, highwire, literature, Mixtec, moon, novel, reading, Susan Straight, writing
Victor Cass is police officer by day, writer and artist by night. In his book Telenovela, he explores the lives of Lorena and Miriya, two women who (it seems) couldn’t be any more different from each other. Perhaps Cass’s own multifaceted life gave him insight into how opposites can be not-so-opposite after all.
Here Cass reads an excerpt from the book. Recorded at the Latino Book and Family Festival in October.
Posted in GuerrillaReads
Tagged Argentina, author, guerrilla, Latino Book and Family Festival, literature, novel, Pasadena, reading, telenovela, Victor Cass, writing
Author David Corbett reads from his novel about immigration, war and family, Do They Know I’m Running?
Corbett explained his approach to this book in a recent blog post:
Believing that what was genuinely needed at this time was a more sincere, empathetic but not sanitized attempt to imagine the lives of people we think of as different, and remembering one of my favorite quotes from John Coltrane–“If there is something one does not understand, one must go humbly to it”–I tried in Do They Know I’m Running? to depict a Salvadoran-American family dealing with both the damage of war and the nightmare of deportation.
Before writing his first novel, Corbett worked for a private investigations firm and his wife’s law practice. He’s the author of three critically acclaimed novels as well as many articles and stories.
Posted in GuerrillaReads
Tagged author, border, David Corbett, El Salvador, guerrilla, immigration, Latino Book and Family Festival, literature, noir, novel, reading, veteran, writing
Clouds brushed the wings of the airplane. José Francisco Verguerio Silva looked out the window and suddenly had the feeling of bursting through the glass, tumbling slowly through white heavenly wisps, and finally colliding with the ground, his long Brazilian name smashing into pieces and scattering. He got up to his feet, sobbing as he looked for all the parts of his name, but he had lost them.
By the time he lands in Los Angeles and leaves the airport, all that’s left of his name is “Joe.”
Click to learn more about Kathleen de Azevedo and her award-winning novel, Samba Dreamers.
Posted in GuerrillaReads
Tagged author, Brazil, guerrilla, Kathleen de Azevedo, Latino Book and Family Festival, literature, novel, reading, writing
How to live the good life? Just ask Fritz Donnelly. Each chapter of his book explores a different aspect of what makes the good life, such as
This guerrilla reading features chapter 4 – Take note.
There are shades of Dostoyevsky in this enigmatic book; humor and pathos in the narrator’s voice. It’s as laugh-out-loud funny as you dare to read: “Part psychological adventure tale and part hilarious philosophical investigation.”
You can see more chapters or buy the book: How To Live the Good Life: The Complete Book of Rules.
Posted in GuerrillaReads
Tagged author, Fritz Donnelly, guerrilla, How To Live the Good Life, literature, New York City, novel, reading, writing
