As Cara Romero confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight in Angie Cruz’s How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water. The Guerreros have lived in upper Manhattan for twenty years, and take radically different paths when faced with encroaching gentrification in Cleyvis Natera’s Neruda on the Park.
Photo Credit: Erika Morillo
Angie Cruz is the author of the novels Soledad, Let It Rain Coffee, and Dominicana, which was a Good Morning America Book Club pick and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. She is founder and editor in chief of Aster(ix), a literary and arts journal, and is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is her latest novel.
Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan
Cleyvis Natera was born in the Dominican Republic, migrated to the United States at ten years old, and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Her writing has won awards and fellowships from PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey. Neruda on the Park is her first novel.
Lupita Aquino—better known as Lupita Reads—is a passionate literary enthusiast amplifying and highlighting books through Instagram and TikTok. When she’s not reading, you can catch her writing about books for Today.com, She Reads dot com, the Washington Independent Review of Books, and for her substack, which spotlights Latine authors and their books. She lives in the greater Washington DC area and enjoys visiting the local bookstores with her family on the weekends.
