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Awards and newsLatino Life
January 4, 2016

January Bargain at E-Volt: The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind

This month E-volt – where you can get books for $2.99 or less – is offering  The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind on sale for $1.99. You might not remember the novel – quiet as it was – but it's the book that has made the biggest impact on me as an author. The synopsis is here, but I describe the novel as a mix of magical realism and telenovela mostly because it’s one of those sweeping stories with large casts and a few spirits. It's about secrets, traitors, and love stricken heroes, all hopefully drawn with some depth. But at its core, The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind is actually realistic fiction, too. That's because it's a tale of migration and why young people take unimaginable risks to move toward better circumstances. It names that terrible brew of longing and violence the powerless often see in this life. I've heard said that each novel you write teaches you how to be a better writer. If that's true, this one was a strict SOB of a teacher. I rewrote The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind more times than I care to count, trying to preserve a stylized storytelling while getting at a contemporary issue with honesty. What a struggle! I reworked the manuscript top to bottom, axing plot lines and characters. Several times I thought I would abandon the project altogether. I couldn't find my way somehow. I couldn't settle on what I really wanted to say about Sonia and the people in…
Meg Medina
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AppearancesLatino LifeThe Writing Life
September 24, 2014

Banned On the Run…

It's a double whammy! Banned Books week and Hispanic Heritage month, so I've been on the road with no sign of rest in the near future. Fellow REFORMISTA Loida Garcia Febo just shared this link to Latino books that have been challenged and banned, including the book that turned me to writing in the first place: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.  Que cosa mas grande... Gracias, Loida. Lists like this inspire me to write more books that might cause alarm and discomfort – and hey, even thought. And they make me feel especially fired up about my first teaching gig at Las Comadres Writers Conference in Brooklyn this weekend. Las Comadres is more than a conference. It's a movement based on the core principle of mentorship and culture. On Saturday, established Latina authors and publishing pros will come together at Medgar Evers College to help yet-to-be published authors learn the ropes. What's in it for me?  Mostly getting more Latino voices at the literary table, especially those writing for kids since this year, for the first time,  our public schools will be a majority minority. Besides, I'll be helping to create more amazing books that will end up on banned book lists. So, hermanas, if you have a story, if you've been too shy to admit that you want to be a writer, if you just don't know where to begin, register for Las Comadres. Finally, here are a few pictures from my recent travels to the DC area.  I'm exhausted, but so grateful to Candlewick…
Meg Medina
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AppearancesThe Writing Life
March 17, 2014

A Kid Lit Conference Con Sabor

Dr. Jamie Naidoo, Teresa Mlawer, Margarita Engle, Adriana Dominguez, Lila Quintero Weaver (front), Laura Lacámara, me, and Irania Patterson Snow outside - AGAIN. Thank goodness for the leftover cozy feelings from the  National Latino Children's Literature Conference this past weekend. On a scale of 1 - 10 in warmth and  camaraderie, it ranks about a 50. Lifting Me Home by Laura Lacámara One reason was the  faculty, a solid collection of Latinas in publishing. It included the fabulous former editor and literary agent Adriana Dominguez; color goddess illustrator Laura Lacámara; multiple-award winning poet and prose author Margarita Engle; Lila Quintero Weaver (who we've talked about here); bilingual library pro and storyteller Irania Patterson (how can anyone imitate every accent in the Spanish-speaking world?); longtime publishing icon Teresa Mlawer ("sounds like flour, with an m"); and me. For three days we worked side by side with teachers and librarians from all over the country who wanted to know how to use multicultural books to serve all kids. Inevitably, we all drew close as we asked ourselves hard questions and generated new ideas. "I'm so glad you guys aren't divas," one of them told me as we all sat together. Some of my personal highlights and favorite ideas: Margarita Engle. Poet, feminist, botanist, historian. If you want your students to experience history's most unknown and shocking corners, seek out her books. Who else can tell you about pirates in the 1400s, search-and-rescue mountain dogs, Cuba's first feminist, and how the Panama Canal was dug by hand...…
Meg Medina
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Adult booksGuestsLatino Life
August 19, 2013

James River Writers Conference Spotlight: Elizabeth Huergo

About this time of year, I start to perk up with bookish anticipation. The autumn brings us the Virginia Literary Festival (Oct 16 - 20, 2013), anchored in part by the James River Writers Conference. Now in its eleventh year, the JRW Conference is a special treat for the writing community since it gathers nationally-recognized and bestselling authors in our city for three days of fun and learning. This year, I'm especially happy to find debut novelist (and fellow Latina author) Elizabeth Huergo on the impressive roster. Elizabeth is a scholar of literature (receiving her M.A. in 19th-century American Literature and her Ph.D. in British Romanticism from Brown University), and she has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Rhode Island College, American University, and George Mason University. Her novel, The Death of Fidel Perez (Unbridled Books, 2013), is set in modern day Cuba against the eternal question, What if Fidel fell? Here Elizabeth and I talk about our shared cultural roots and the challenges of conveying the pain and complexities of political history in writing. You left Cuba as a girl during the years immediately following the Cuban revolution. What had your life been like until then? Where did your family settle in the United States? Elizabeth and her mother in 1961, weeks before they would leave Cuba I was born in May of 1959. My mother and I left Cuba when I was about three years old. My father had to leave about a year before us for political…
Meg Medina
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Guests
October 8, 2012

Q & A with Christina Díaz Gonzalez

Christina Diaz Gonzalez It's a pleasure to introduce you to Christina Diaz Gonzalez as we head into the final week of Hispanic Heritage Month. You may remember her from her debut novel, The Red Umbrella. Her follow-up, A Thunderous Whisper, is also historical fiction, this time set in Europe during the Spanish Civil War. Told through the eyes of 13-year-old Ani, the novel shines a light on yet another corner of World War II. Before we jump into your new novel, I’d like to know a little bit about you. I understand that you were an attorney at one time. Now, you live in Florida and write lovely books that celebrate Hispanic history. How did you go from one career to the other?  I was a practicing attorney when my kids learned to read.  Watching their love for books grow rekindled my secret, childhood dream of being a writer.  Soon there was no stopping me and I became passionate about writing. Guernica by Pablo Picasso One of the things I most admire about A Thunderous Whisper is that it brings world history to life for American kids.  You take us to a very specific corner of history (specifically to the Spanish Civil War as it connected to Franco’s relationship with Hitler during WWII. You also introduce young American readers to the Basques. Why did this particular episode in history attract you?  A series of seemingly unrelated events (spread out over the course of several months) led me to write A Thunderous Whisper. …
Meg Medina
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Awards and news
May 30, 2012

When Characters Muscle In

Thank you, Hannah Love, for this photo The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind releases through Walker Books in the UK as a gorgeous paperback next month -- and review copies are going out with their own milagro. Nice!  Here's a post I did for Under Cover Books about the unexpected pleasures of surrendering to your characters. In life and in fiction, I've found that it's always the quiet ones that surprise you. At least, that's how it happened in this book. P.S. Love the cover? Me gusta tambien. Check out Olaf Hajek's other beautiful work.  Here's a teaser. I vote for more illustration in YA book jackets.
Meg Medina
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