Latino Book Review Presents

Ada Limón is the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the first Latina ever to hold this position. She is the author of several acclaimed collections, including  Startlement: New and Selected Poems . Her work explores grief, wonder, tenderness, and what it means to be fully present on earth. 

Rayna Grande is an award-winning author. She is widely recognized as one of the most impactful voices of Latinx literature today. Her work explores migration, coming-of-age, and the complicated beauty of belonging.

Rossy Lima is a writer, scholar, translator, and community leader whose work has been published in multiple languages across several countries. She began her career in literature as an undocumented writer, and she is the Executive Director of Latino Book Review. Her poetry has been nationally acclaimed and has won a myriad of awards.

Carmen Tafolla is an educator, storyteller, artist, and scholar with a Ph. D. in bilingual education. She has written over 40 books and has presented her work in several continents. She was the first poet laureate of the city of San Antonio, the first Latina to be named president of the Texas Institute of Letters and she has been recognized with multiple awards. In this episode with Héctor Rendón,...

Ana Castillo is a Chicana and feminist writer whose career has inspired people for several decades. She has received many awards for her writings, including the Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement, and has been selected for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Her work has been the object of study for countless academic studies. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Ana talks about the origins of...

Diana Lopez is a graduate of the MFA program at Texas State University. She was a middle school teacher and a university professor. Her middle-grade books are read in schools across the United States. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Diana talks about the state of children's literature within the Latinx community, the origin of her relationship with literature, her latest book Los Monstru...

Erika Denise Edwards is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has conducted research about race and gender in Argentina and has been instrumental in reigniting the conversation of colorism and blackness in Latin America. She is the author of the book Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic pu...

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a professor of creative writing at St. Mary's University in California. He is one of the founders of Undocupoets, an organization that helped remove the requirement of U.S. citizenship in several major first-book poetry awards. He is regarded as one of the most promising Latinx writers, and his work has been praised by multiple national outlets. In this interview...

Manuel Muñoz is a first-generation college student who graduated from Harvard University and received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Cornell University. He has also been recognized with multiple awards and is a professor at the University of Arizona. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Manuel Muños shares about his life, his experience of working in the fields and his academic...

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa is a Puerto Rican author who has lived in the Bronx for most of her life. Before becoming a recognized writer, she spent decades working as a teacher and as a librarian in the New York City public school system. She has received multiple awards, and she is recognized for telling stories from the perspective of Afro-Latinas in Puerto Rico. In this interview with Héctor Rendón...

Estela González is a binational and bilingual immigrant writer. She is a Latina who writes about the environment, class, and gender. She is a 2019 finalist in the Louise Meriwether Prize by Feminist Press. She is also a university professor who teaches creative writing at Middlebury College in Vermont. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Estela shares about her life, the themes within her book,...

Erika L. Sánchez is a New York Times bestselling author, a National Book Award Finalist, and the Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz Chair at DePaul University in Chicago. She has been praised as one of the most accomplished young Latina writers of our time. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Erika shares about her family background, her desire for equity, her literary journey, future projects, and much...

Meg Medina is a multifaceted author. She writes picture books, middle-grade stories and young adult fiction. In 2019, she won the prestigious John Newbery Medal, and she has won a long list of other awards. She is a New York Times Best Selling Author. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Meg shares about her family and background, her literary journey, the themes in her books and much more.

Angela Cervantes is one of the most prolific children's authors of our time. She writes books for middle school children, and she started writing her stories at the age of nine. Her stories focus on Latina main characters, and they have been praised everywhere. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Angela speaks about the origin of her love for reading and writing, cultural visibility in literatur...

Sandra Cisneros is one of the most influential Latinx authors of all time. She is regarded by many as the main reference in Latinx and Chicano literature. She has sold millions of books, and her work has been translated all over the world. Her book, The House of Mango Street, is a popular reading in schools and universities across the United States. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Sandra Cis...

Tony Diaz is a writer, activist and professor. He was the first Chicano to earn a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. He is also a political analyst with his own radio show, and his work has been published by multiple national media outlets. He is the founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say , which encourages cultural change within Latin...

Christopher Carmona is the interim director of Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and an author of poetry and fiction. He is the author of the saga El Rinche: The Ghost Ranger of the Rio Grande , an acclaimed story that reimagines the Lone Ranger as a Chicano Superhero. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Christopher Carmona talks about his work, superheroes, t...

Kianny Antigua is a bilingual author specialized in children's literature. She was born in the Dominican Republic, migrated to the U.S. when she was a teenager, and today she is a writer and a senior lecturer at Dartmouth College. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Kianny Antigua talks about her children's books, language, culture, and self-love.

Felicia Rose Chavez is an educator and nonfiction writer who has revolutionized classrooms across the United States. Her work and her teaching techniques have been recognized with multiple awards. In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Felicia Rose Chavez talks about her book titled The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop , classroom oppression faced by students of color across the country, a plan of acti...

At a time when the U.S. society is reckoning with systemic racism, Natalia Molina from USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences sheds light on how the concept of race is made in America. Dr. Molina is one of the top scholars working on race, history and Latinx studies. She is also an award-winning author who was recently named a MacArthur Fellow. Her book titled How Race Is Made in Ameri...

Alberto Ledesma can be considered one of the early Dreamers in the United States. He currently works as Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley. He is also a writer and cartoonist and has published an illustrated book titled Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer . In this interview with Héctor Rendón, Alberto Ledesma talks about his undocumented origins, his journey through the Am...

Julia Alvarez is one of the most recognizable faces in Latinx literature. She has won the Hispanic Heritage Award, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award, and in 2013 she was awarded the National Medal of Arts from the President of the United States. In this interview with Héctor "Vale" Rendón, Julia Alvarez talks about her identity and the role it has in her writing, her time in the Dominican Republic, th...

Maria Hinojosa has been a journalist for nearly 30 years. She has won multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards and two Kennedy Awards for excellence in journalism. She is the host of the radio show Latino USA distributed by NPR, and she is the founder of Futura Media. In this interview with Vale Rendón, Maria Hinojosa talks about her book Once I Was You , the separation of children from their p...

Oswaldo Estrada is a writer and a full professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has won multiple awards and, most recently, edited a short story book titled Incurables . In this conversation with Vale, he talks about his work as an academic, his experience as a Peruvian immigrant and how it contributes to his creative writing, the curre...

Carlos Aguasaco is a poet, a storyteller and an associate professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at The City University of New York. In this interview with Vale Rendón, he speaks about his origins in Colombia, his trajectory as a poet, El Chapulín Colorado, his poetry book The New York City Subway Poems/ Poemas del metro de Nueva York, and more.