The Author in First Person

I was born in Houston’s inner city in 1971 and managed to live there without air conditioning for eighteen years before escaping to the University of Texas at Austin. Then, right before graduation, I escaped college for the adventure of starting a family.

It was around that time that I turned my casual love of writing into a long- running Web site, gwenworld.com, and gigs at other Web sites such as Television Without Pity. It wasn’t until 2000, though, that I worked up the nerve to start reading my work to audiences. Houston’s premier Latino literature organization, Nuestra Palabra, gave me my “in real life” start.

In 2004, Arte Público Press published my first book, a short- prose collection called To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him. Like most smallpress books, it didn’t exactly make a big splash. But the reviews were very encouraging, and so I wrote again. In 2008, Arte Público published my first kids’ book, Growing Up with Tamales. This is my first novel with Grand Central Publishing. I hope you enjoyed it and will look for the next.

I’ve been profiled and quoted in newspapers and magazines ranging from the Austin Chronicle to the New York Post to the Dublin Times. I’ve won literary fellowships and even a poetry prize. When I have time, I do readings and seminars at universities. When I’m not working on this writing stuff (or otherwise making a living), I hang out with my three sons, my one boyfriend, and our two cats.