Please join Kathleen Alcalá and Rigoberto González to launch a new edition of SPIRITS of the ORDINARY from Raven Chronicles Press—with a foreword by Rigoberto González.
Link to live even:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88420546769
Also live on Raven’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RavenChroniclesPress/
Set in northern Mexico in the 1870s, Spirits of the Ordinary weaves the stories of women struggling against societal constraints, Mexican Jews practicing their religion in secret, and a gold prospector turned spiritual seeker in a spectacular desert landscape.
Winner of the Washington State Governor’s Writers Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award when originally published in 1997, Spirits of the Ordinary was one of the first books to address the topic of the hidden Jews of Mexico. The author has gone on to write two more novels of the Mexico-U.S. borderland in the late 19th century (The Flower in the Skull and Treasures in Heaven), and in her collection of essays, The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing, she describes how the three novels were inspired by family stories, interviews with elders, and extensive research.
Rigoberto González is the author of eighteen books of poetry and prose. His awards include Lannan, Guggenheim, NEA, NYFA, and USA Rolón fellowships, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. A critic-at-large for The LA Times and contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine, he is the series editor for the Camino del Sol Latinx Literary Series at the University of Arizona Press. Currently, he’s Distinguished Professor of English and the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey.
A writer whose work embraces both traditional and innovative storytelling techniques, KATHLEEN ALCALÁ is the author of six award-winning books that include a collection of stories, three novels, an essay collection, and a blueprint for sustainability, The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island. The daughter of Mexican parents, Alcalá was born and raised in California, and now lives in the Pacific Northwest.