Acclaimed poet and novelist Sandra Cisneros first gained recognition in 1984 for her debut novel, The House on Mango Street. A coming-of-age story about a young Latina growing up in Chicago, the novel dealt with Chicana identity and the straddling of Mexican and Anglo-American cultures. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation, Cisneros has published works including the novel Caramelo; a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek; two books of poetry, My Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; and a children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos. Cisneros is the founder of the Macondo Foundation, an association of writers united to aid underserved communities and is Writer in Residence at Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio. Her forthcoming book, Have You Seen Marie?, tells the story of a woman’s search for a cat who goes missing in the days after the death of the narrator’s mother. Richly illustrated by Ester Hernandez, it is a tale of loss, grief, and healing.
Ester Hernandez is an internationally acclaimed visual artist whose work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. She lives in San Francisco.
Michael Krasny is the host of the KQED radio program Forum. He is also a professor of English at San Francisco State University and the author of Spiritual Envy: an Agnostic’s Quest and Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life. His many interviews for City Arts & Lectures include Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and Brian Greene.
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