ROUND 2: MYTHS AND MODERN MAGIC

11:15 am - 12:00 pm
| Location of Session: Copper Kitchen
Young Adult (YA) Sessions

Start of Signing: 12:15 pm
| Signing Location: Festival Marketplace

My Schedule

About the Event

Why do we return to myths? Award-winning authors David Bowles and Guadalupe García McCall reimagine a beloved Aztec tale of star-crossed lovers with one last chance to reunite in Hearts of Fire and Snow. A fantasy for young adults who are ready to better the world.

About the Author

Photo Credit: Loba

David Bowles

David Bowles is an award-winning Mexican American author and translator from Texas. His books include The Smoking Mirror; Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky; They Call Me Güero; They Call Her Fregona; The Prince & the Coyote; and Secret of the Moon Conch. He has been published in the New York Times, School Library Journal, Strange Horizons, English Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. In 2017, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, and in 2020, he co-founded #DignidadLiteraria, a social justice movement advocating for greater Latinx representation in publishing. His latest book, co-written with Guadalupe García McCall, is Hearts of Fire and Snow.

Photo Credit: Michael Mercado Smith

Guadalupe García McCall

Guadalupe García McCall is the award-winning author of Under the Mesquite, Summer of the Mariposas, Shame the Stars, All the Stars Denied, Echoes of Grace, and Secret of the Moon Conch. She has received a Pura Belpré Award, a Westchester Young Adult Fiction Award, and the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, and was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, among many other accolades. She advocates for literacy and diverse books and lives with her husband in Texas. Her latest book, co-authored with David Bowles, is Hearts of Fire and Snow.

Moderator

Marcia Argueta Mickelson

Marcia Argueta Mickelson was born in Guatemala and immigrated to the United States as an infant. She is the author of several young adult novels, including The Weight of Everything and Where I Belong, a Pura Belpré Young Adult Honor Book. She lives in Texas with her husband and three sons. Her next book, The Writing Room, will be published in November 2025.