Together, they dive into what it means to write at the intersections of queerness, Latinidad, and being broke as hell—touching on everything from storytelling during Pride to deconstructing the so-called “American Dream,” and even airing their grievances about Shakira’s canceled concert.

Tune in to get all the chisme.

About the Authors:

Venessa Vida Kelley
Venessa is a Nuyorican author, illustrator, and aspiring mermaid who writes fairy tales about the real world so they can draw them too. They hold a BA and MA in English literature with concentrations in film from the University of Delaware and the George Washington University respectively, and their illustrations have decorated LGBTQ+ books worldwide. Venessa lives in Washington, DC, with their spouse, two sons, and an overabundance of teacups and washi tape.

Vanessa’s Book:
When the Tides Held the Moon
https://www.venessakelley.com/when-the-tides-held-the-moon

Edgar Gomez
Edgar Gomez is a queer NicaRican writer born and raised in Florida. He is the author of the memoir High-Risk Homosexual, winner of the American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Their sophomore book, Alligator Tears, was released in February 2025 and was called "triumphant, dazzling, and unfailingly stylish" by Publisher's Weekly.

A graduate of the University of California’s MFA program, Gomez has written for The LA Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub, New York Magazine, and beyond. He has received fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Black Mountain Institute. He lives between New York and Puerto Rico. Find him across social media @OtroEdgarGomez.

Edgar’s Book:
Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743399/alligator-tears-by-edgar-gomez/

Social Media Handles:
Be sure to follow Venessa at https://www.venessakelley.com/ and on Instagram @vkelleyart, and Edgar at https://edgargomez.net/ and on Instagram @otroedgargomez.

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In this special bonus episode, we’re sharing on-the-ground interviews with three incredible voices in the literary world: Alexandra Villasante (co-founder of the conference), YA author Michael Solis, and poet-novelist Aida Salazar. From building spaces for Latinx creators to navigating the publishing world, these conversations are full of gems for writers, readers, and storytellers alike.

📍 The 2025 Latinx Storyteller Conference is coming up this fall (Sept 12–13 at Scholastic HQ in NYC) — and registration opens later this month!

✍🏽 Register & learn more here!
🗞️ Subscribe to the newsletter for early access to tickets, manuscript/portfolio consults, and behind-the-scenes content

🎥 Catch the video interviews on YouTube: @LosBookisPodcast
📲 Follow us: @Los.Bookis.Podcast | @adriangaston.garcia | @que_viva_sergio_lopez
📲 Follow the conference: @LKBFstorytellers on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok & Threads

Gracias for listening—and stay tuned for more bonus episodes from the conference!
Hasta luego, bookworms ✨📚

Produced by Antonio Caro. 

About the Author: @sntsnchz
Santiago Jose Sanchez is a queer Colombian American writer and artist born in Ibagué, Colombia. Their stories have been featured in McSweeney’s Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Subtropics, and Joyland. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Yale University, Sanchez teaches  at  Grinnell College and lives in Iowa, Miami, and New York City. Hombrecito is their debut novel. 

About the Book: Hombrecito
Santiago Jose Sanchez plunges us into the heart of one boy’s life. His mother takes him and his brother from Colombia to America, leaving their absent father behind but disappearing herself once they get to Miami. As he grows, the boy embraces his queerness as wholeheartedly as he embraces his new home, but not without a sense of loss. His relationship with his mother becomes fraught, tangled, a love so intense that it borders on vivid pain but is also the axis around which his every decision revolves. 

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Produced by Antonio Caro @agcaromaya

About the Author: @hello.samanito

Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. He has studied at Bread Loaf as a work/study scholar and at Tin House. His work has appeared in The Common, Ninth Letter, Passages North, and Chicago Quarterly Review. He’s also been known to draw little creatures.

About the Book: Monstrilio

After her son dies, Magos carves out a small piece of his lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her decaying childhood home in Mexico City. But despite her best efforts to turn the monster into a man, Monstrilio's innate impulses threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life. A meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova's ambitious debut spans the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, offering an uncanny and precise portrait of being human.

Click here to watch the episode on YouTube!

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Produced by Antonio Caro @agcaromaya

About the Author: @melissamogollonwriter
Melissa Mogollon holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA from the George Washington University. Originally from Colombia and raised in Florida, she now teaches at a boarding school in Rhode Island, where she lives with her partner and dog. Oye is her first novel. 

About the Book: Oye: A Novel
As the baby of her large Colombian American family, Luciana is usually relegated to the sidelines. But now she finds herself as the only voice of reason in the face of an unexpected crisis: A hurricane is heading straight for Miami, and her eccentric grandmother, Abue, is refusing to evacuate. Abue is so one-of-a-kind she’s basically in her own universe, and while she often drives Luciana nuts, they’re the only ones who truly understand each other. So when Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, receives a shocking medical diagnosis during the storm, Luciana’s world is upended. 

Unfolding like the most fascinating and entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped on, Oye is a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel that celebrates the beauty revealed and resilience required when rewriting your own story.  

Author Recommended Playlist:
Olivia Rodrigo - Brutal
Chappell Roan - Pink Pony Club

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Produced by Antonio Caro @agcaromaya

About the Author: @JoeJimenez_writ
Joe Jiménez is the author of the poetry collection Rattlesnake Allegory and Bloodline, a young adult novel. He was the recipient of the 2016 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize, and he was awarded a Lucas Artists Literary Artists Fellowship. 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. 

About the Book: Hot Boy Summer
Four Fierce Teens. Three Rules to Live By. Two Iconic Encounters. One Hot Boy Summer.

Told in Mac’s infectious, joyful, gay AF voice, Hot Boy Summer serves as a tale as important as hope itself: four gay teens doing what they can to reconnect and have the fiercest summer of their lives. New friendships will be forged, hot boys will be detoxed. 

Author Recommended Playlist: Ariana Grande - Into You, No More Tears, Rain on Me

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Produced by Antonio Caro @agcaromaya

In this episode, AGG and Sergio have a lively discussion with Caro De Robertis about their obsession with Greek mythology, how writers begin as passionate readers, and the ups and downs of the human experience. Caro spills the tea about their journey of being exiled by family, dealing with homophobic relatives, and the joy of working with a queer Latina editor. They also delve into the power of honoring the erotic in literature, the adventures of queer parenting, and share the captivating story of how they discovered their queerness. 

About the Author: Caro De Robertis   - @caro_derobertis
Caro De Robertis is the award-winning and bestselling author of several books, including The President and the Frog, Cantoras, and more. Their work has been translated into eighteen languages and has garnered numerous honors including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Stonewall Book Awards and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, which they were the first openly nonbinary person to receive. De Robertis is also an award-winning literary translator and a professor at San Francisco State University. They live in Oakland, CA with their two children. 

About the Book: The Palace of Eros
Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as a woman yet undesirable as a wife. Secretly, she longs for a life away from the expectations and demands of men. When her father realizes that the future of his family and town will be forever cursed unless he appeases an enraged Aphrodite, he follows the orders of the Oracle, tying Psyche to a rock to be ravaged by a monstrous husband. And yet a monster never arrives.

Told in bold and sparkling prose, The Palace of Eros transports us to a magical world imbued by divine forces as well as everyday realities, where palaces glitter with magic even as ordinary people fight for freedom in a society that fears the unknown.

Author Recommended Playlist:
Kali Uchis - Moonlight
Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing
Rita Indiana - Miedo 

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Produced by Antonio Caro @agcaromaya

About the Author: @aaronaceves
Aaron H. Aceves is a bisexual, Mexican-American writer born and raised in East L.A. He graduated from Harvard College and received his MFA from Columbia University. His fiction has appeared in Epiphany, The Florida Review, and Passages North, among other places. He currently lives in Texas, where he serves as an Early Career Provost Fellow at UT Austin, and his debut novel, This Is Why They Hate Us, was released by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. It received multiple starred reviews and was named a Best Young Adult Book of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews.

About the Book: This is Why They Hate Us
Enrique “Quique” Luna has one goal this summer—get over his crush on Saleem Kanazi by pursuing his other romantic prospects. Never mind that he’s only out to his best friend, Fabiola. Never mind that he has absolutely zero game. And definitely forget the fact that good and kind and, not to mention, beautiful Saleem is leaving L.A. for the summer to meet a girl his family is trying to set him up with.

Luckily, Quique’s prospects are each intriguing in their own ways. There’s stoner-jock Tyler Montana, who might be just as interested in Fabiola as he is in Quique; straight-laced senior class president, Ziggy Jackson; and Manny Zuniga, who keeps looking at Quique like he’s carne asada fresh off the grill. With all these choices, Quique is sure to forget about Saleem in no time.

But as the summer heats up and his deep-seated fears and anxieties boil over, Quique soon realizes that getting over one guy by getting under a bunch of others may not have been the best-laid plan, and living his truth can come at a high cost.

Author Recommended Playlist:
Brockhampton - Swim
Frank Ocean - Self Control
Mashrou’ Leila - Ashabi

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Produced by Antonio Caro @agcaromaya

About the Author: @poetrichardblanco

Richard Blanco’s work has been praised by Ada Limón, Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, and Elizabeth Alexander, among many others; his poems have appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and dozens of other publications. He is the recent recipient of the National Humanities Medal and was selected by Barack Obama as the fifth presidential inaugural poet in US history. 

About the Book: Homeland of My Body
In this collection of over one hundred poems, Richard Blanco has carefully culled work from his previous book to represent the evolution of a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define “home,” and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his lifelong quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses: love, family, identity, and, ultimately, art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that “home” is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art. 

Author Recommended Playlist:
James Taylor - Carolina In My Mind
Jackson Brown - The Pretender
Dua Lipa - Cold Heart 

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Produced by Antonio Caro @agcaromaya

About the Author: @JessicaTParra
As a lawyer and daughter of Guatemalan and Cuban bakers, Jessica Parra never objects to an extra slice of cake. She’s a Los Angeles native who loves to write about Latinas with big hair (and even bigger dreams), complicated families, and the healing magic of acceptance. She’s the author of Rubi Ramos’s Recipe for Success, the forthcoming The Quince Project (both published with Wednesday Books), as well as many unfinished first drafts about cats living their best lives—all nine of them. When she isn’t drafting books you can find her sipping kombucha, cuddling with her kitties, or co-piloting the Millennium Falcon at Disneyland’s Galaxy’s Edge.

About the Book: The Quince Project
The Wedding Planner gets a YA makeover in this delightful and heartfelt novel from the author of Rubi Ramos’s Recipe for Success.

Castillo Torres, Student Body Association event chair and serial planner, could use a fairy godmother. After a disastrous mishap at her sister's quinceañera and her mother's unexpected passing, all of Cas's plans are crumbling. So when a local lifestyle-guru-slash-party-planner opens up applications for the internship of her dreams, Cas sees it as the perfect opportunity to learn every trick in the book so that things never go wrong again. 

The only catch is that she needs more party planning experience before she can apply. When she books a quinceañera for a teen Disneyland vlogger, Cas thinks her plan is taking off...until she discovers that the party is just a publicity stunt and she catches feelings for the chambelán. It's clear that her agenda is about to go way off-script, and that real life is a bit more complicated than a fairy tale. 

But maybe Happily Ever Afters aren't just for the movies and a little spontaneity is just what she needs. Can Cas go from planner to participant in her own life? Or will this would-be princess turn into a pumpkin at the end of the ball? 

Author Recommended Playlist:
Waiting for Tonight - Jennifer Lopez
The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) - John Williams
Tiempo de Vals - Chayanne 

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Produced by @CaandorLabs

About the Author: @andres_ordorica
Andrés N. Ordorica (He/him) is a queer Latinx writer based in Edinburgh. Drawing on his family’s immigrant history and third culture upbringing, his writing maps the journey of diaspora and unpacks what it means to be from ni de aquí, ni de allá (neither here, nor there). He is the author of the poetry collection At Least This I Know and novel How We Named the Stars. He has been shortlisted for the Morley Lit Prize, the Mo Siewcharran Prize and the Saltire Society’s Poetry Book of The Year. In 2024, he was selected as one of The Observer’s 10 Best Debut Novelists in the UK.

About the Book:  How We Named the Stars
Set between the United States and México, Andrés N. Ordorica’s debut novel is a tender and lyrical exploration of belonging, grief, and first love―a love story for those so often written off the page. When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family’s hopes and dreams, and the burden of sharing his late uncle’s name. Daniel flounders at first―but then Sam, his roommate, changes everything. As their relationship evolves from brotherly banter to something more intimate, Daniel soon finds himself in love with a man who helps him see himself in a new light. But just as their relationship takes flight, Daniel is pulled away, first by Sam’s hesitation and then by a brutal turn of events that changes Daniel’s life forever.

As he grapples with profound loss, Daniel finds himself in his family’s ancestral homeland in México for the summer, finding joy in this setting even as he struggles to come to terms with what’s happened and faces a host of new questions: How does the person he is connect with this place his family comes from? How is his own story connected to his late uncle’s? And how might he reconcile the many parts of himself as he learns to move forward?

Equal parts tender and triumphant, Andrés N. Ordorica’s How We Named the Stars is a debut novel of love, heartache, redemption, and learning to honor the dead; a story of finding the strength to figure out who you are—and who you could be—if only the world would let you.

Author Recommended Playlist:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Hysteric 
Omar Apollo - En El Olvido
Vicente Fernandez - Volver, Volver

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About the Author: @jaquiradiaz
Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico. Her work has been published in the New York Times Style Magazine, the Guardian, Longreads, Conde Nast Traveler, and included in The Best American Essay of 2016. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award, two Pushcart Prizes,  an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She splits her time between Montreal and Miami Beach with her partner, the writer Lars Horn. 

About the Book:
While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her developing sexual identity. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be. 

Author Recommended Playlist:
Missy Elliot - Work It
La Lupe - La Tirana
Hector Lavoe - Un Amor de la Calle 

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Produced by @CaandorLabs

About the Author: @sonora.reyes 
Sonora Reyes is a queer second-generation Mexican American who attended a Catholic high school. They write fiction full of queer and Latinx characters in a variety of genres. Sonora is also the creator and host of #QPOCChat, a monthly community-building Twitter chat for queer writers of color. They currently live in Arizona, in a multi-generational family home with a small pack of dogs who run the place. 

About the Book: The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School
Sixteen-year-old Yamilet Flores prefers to be known for her killer eyeliner, not for being one of the only Mexican kids at her new, mostly white, very rich Catholic school. But at least here no one knows she's gay, and Yami intends to keep it that way.

After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend before transferring to Slayton Catholic, Yami has new priorities: keep her brother out of trouble, make her mom proud, and, most importantly, don't fall in love. Granted, she's never been great at any of those things, but that's a problem for Future Yami.

The thing is, it's hard to fake being straight when Bo, the only openly queer girl at school, is so annoyingly perfect. And smart. And talented. And cute. So cute. Either way, Yami isn't going to make the same mistake again. If word got back to her mom, she could face a lot worse than rejection. So she'll have to start asking, WWSGD: What would a straight girl do?

Author Recommended Playlist:
Hozier - Take Me To Church
Hayley Kiyoko - Sleepover 
Lauren Aquilina - Sinners

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Produced by @CaandorLabs

About the author: 
Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, Tin House, and The Washington Post. He lives in Los Angeles and is an associate professor of English at UCLA. In November 2023, Justin Torres won the National Book Award for Fiction for his novel, “Blackouts.”

Connect with Justin at https://justin-torres.com/ or follow him on Instagram at @justin_torres_books. 

Author Recommended Playlist:
The Rolling Stones - Paint it Black
La Lupe

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Produced by Caandor Labs 

*Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of sexual assault and may be triggering for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

About the author:
Myriam Gurba is a writer and artist. She is the author of the true-crime memoir Mean, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. O, The Oprah Magazine, ranked Mean as one of the best LGBTQ books of all time. Publishers Weekly describes Gurba as having a voice like no other. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, Time, and 4Columns. She has shown art in galleries, museums, and community centers. She lives in Pasadena, California.

About The Book:
Creep is Myriam's second book and is a blistering and deceptively playful genealogy of creeps: the individuals who deceive, exploit, and oppress. In eleven bold and electrifying pieces, Gurba mines her own life and the lives of others - some  famous, some infamous, some you’ve never heard of but will likely never forget - to unearth the toxic traditions that have long plagued our culture and enabled the abusers who haunt our books, learning institutions, and homes.

Connect with Myriam at https://www.myriamgurba.com/  or follow her on Instagram at @alt_myriam_gurba666

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Author recommended playlist:
Chavela Vargas - Paloma Negra
Zapp & Roger - More Bounce to the Ounce
Rosie & The Originals - Angel Baby

Produced by Caandor Labs 

About the author: 
Alejandro Varela (he/him) is a writer based in New York. His debut novel, The Town of Babylon (2022), was published by Astra House and was a finalist for the National Book Award, as well as a nominee for the PEN America Open Book Award and the Aspen Literary Prize. His work has appeared in The Point Magazine, Georgia Review, Boston Review, Harper’s, The New Republic, and The Offing, among other outlets. Varela is an editor-at-large of Apogee Journal. He has a Master’s Degree in Public Health. The People who Report More Stress, his story collection, was published in April, by Astra House.

About the book: 
The People Who Report More Stress, published by Astra House earlier this year, is a stunning collection of humorous, sexy, and highly-neurotic tales examining issues of parenting, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict in gentrified Brooklyn.

@drovarela 
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Author recommended playlist: 
Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield - What Have I Done to Deserve This
Prince - Little Red Corvette
George Michael - A Different Corner

Produced by Caandor Labs. 

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Hasta luego bookworms! 

 

Produced in Partnership with Caandor Labs