VIEW LIVESTREAM- November 22, 2025 - 3:00 pm
- Children’s Alley – Create! Make-&-Take Stations – MOAD
Free
Presented by Books & Books and Miami Book Fair
Don’t know what to read while safer-at-home? Join El Gran Combo of Latina writers by buying one or more of their participating books from Books & Books (between now and May 1). Buy a book and get an invite with link to our exclusive pachanga online. Join us for conversation and celebration!
List of eligible books:
Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her novel, Dominicana is the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and was chosen as the 2019/2020 Wordup Uptown Reads. It was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, The Aspen Words Literary Prize and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies. She’s the founder and editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal Aster(ix). She’s an Associate professor at University of Pittsburgh where she teaches in the MFA program, and splits her time between Pittsburgh. New York, and Turin.
A writer of Uruguayan origins, Carolina De Robertis is the author of the novels Cantoras, winner of a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice; The Gods of Tango, winner of a Stonewall Book Award; Perla; and the international bestseller The Invisible Mountain, which received Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize. She is also an award-winning translator of Latin American and Spanish literature, and editor of the anthology Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times. She teaches at San Francisco State University, and lives in Oakland, California, with her wife and two children.
Aya de Leon directs the Poetry for the People program, teaching creative writing at UC Berkeley. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning feminist heist/romance series, Justice Hustlers: Uptown Thief; The Boss; The Accidental Mistress; and Side Chick Nation which was the first novel published about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. A graduate of Harvard College, with an MFA in fiction from Antioch University, Aya has been an artist in residence at Stanford University, a Cave Canem poetry fellow, and a slam poetry champion. She publicly married herself in the 90s, and from 1995 to 2012, she hosted an annual Valentine’s Day show that focuses on self-love. She has released three spoken word CDs, several chapbooks, and a video of “Thieves…” Since becoming a mom in 2009, she transitioned from being a touring performer into being a novelist and essayist. Aya began blogging in 2011, and since 2013 has been consistently blogging on race, class, gender, culture, and social justice politics.
Aida Salazar is an award-winning author and arts activist whose writings for adults and children explore issues of identity and social justice. She is the author of the middle grade verse novels, The Moon Within (International Latino Book Award Winner), The Land of the Cranes, and the bio picture book Jovita Wore Pants: The Story of a Revolutionary Fighter. All published by Scholastic. She is slated to co-edit with Yamile Saied Méndez, Calling the Moon: a middle grade anthology on menstruation by writers of color, to be released in 2022. She is a founding member of Las Musas – a Latinx kidlit debut author collective. Her story, By the Light of the Moon, was adapted into a ballet production by the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance and is the first Xicana-themed ballet in history. She lives with her family of artists in a teal house in Oakland, CA.
Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Miami. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, and a Lambda Literary Awards finalist. Ordinary Girls was a Summer/Fall 2019 Indies Introduce Selection, a Fall 2019 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Notable Selection, a November 2019 Indie Next Pick, and a Library Reads October pick. Díaz’s work has been published in The Guardian, The Fader, Conde Nast Traveler, The New York Times Style Magazine, and The Best American Essays 2016, among other publications. She lives in Miami Beach.
