SANDRA CISNEROS PRESENTS: FEARLESS BOOKS, BRAVE WRITERS

10:00 am - 11:00 am
| Location of Session: Russell Hill Rogers Tent
Adult Sessions

Start of Signing: 11:15 am
| Signing Location: Festival Marketplace

My Schedule

About the Event

Sandra Cisneros returns to the San Antonio Book Festival with a conversation curated right from her bookshelf. Join Cisneros and authors Cristina Jiménez (Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change), Joe Jiménez (Hot Boy Summer), and Sonora Reyes (The Broposal) to hear from writers offering powerful reflections on belonging in these vital and vibrant books.

John Olivares Espinoza will introduce the moderator and authors.

About the Author

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Author

Cristina Jiménez

Cristina Jiménez is an award-winning community organizer and a leading voice in movements for social justice. She is Co-Founder and former Executive Director of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country. A Distinguished Lecturer at the City University of New York, Jimenez is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and was included TIME‘s 100 Most Influential People List in 2018. She came to the US from Ecuador in 1998 and grew up undocumented in Queens, New York. Her new book is Dreaming of Home: A Young Latina’s Journey to Pride, Power, and Belonging.

Photo Credit: JPL Productions

Joe Jiménez

Joe Jiménez is the author of the poetry collection Rattlesnake Allegory and the young adult novel Bloodline. He was the recipient of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize, and he was awarded a Lucas Artists Residency. His writing has appeared on the PBS NewsHour and Lambda Literary sites. Joe lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he is a high school English teacher and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. His new young adult novel is Hot Boy Summer.

Photo Credit: Lee Call

Sonora Reyes

Sonora Reyes is the bestselling author of The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School, a Finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and The Luis Ortega Survival Club. Born and raised in Arizona, they write fiction celebrating queer and Mexican stories in a variety of genres, across ages. Outside of writing, Sonora loves breaking their body and vocal cords by playing with their baby niblings and dancing/singing karaoke at the same time. Their new book is The Broposal.

Moderator

Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, national and international book awards, including the PEN America Literary Award, and the National Medal of Arts. More recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized with the Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. In addition to her writing, Cisneros has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two nonprofits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. As a single woman she made the choice to have books instead of children. A citizen of both the United States and Mexico, Cisneros currently lives in San Miguel de Allende and makes her living by her pen.

Photo Courtesy of Keith Dannemiller