On Writing
The PALABRA Archive—what it is and what it means to me
Like most writers, I submit stories to journals, apply for residencies and fellowships, and query agents. I get far more rejections than acceptances, and sometimes feel as if I’m writing and speaking my words in an unlit corner of a vast empty room. And then one day out of the blue, without having to submit,…
Read MoreA long overdue thank-you to my 11th grade teacher (on the second anniversary of my book)
Sometimes you write something that you didn’t realize you’d written until the book is published and readers weigh in and you find out what you wrote. For instance, I wrote a book of stories about a young girl who learns how to exist in the world as a visibly brown, yet invisible girl. Writer, editor,…
Read MoreOn Not Writing About Death
For my 69th birthday in June, one of my sisters gave me a book called The Art of Death by Edwidge Danticat. The subtitle is Writing the Final Story. It’s from The Art Of series edited by Charles Baxter and published by Graywolf Press. In it, Danticat examines death scenes from works by Toni Morrison,…
Read MoreTurning sixty-nine
Partly from nostalgia for a more youthful me and partly from bemusement at having arrived at the age of 69, I tried to remember what marked each of the years of my life ending in the number nine in terms of my writing. Age 9 – It was the year and month of the Cuban…
Read MoreMy AWP 2022: All real, all true
AWP – that annual mega writing conference that some abhor and others adore, or at least like well enough to attend when they can and feel a pang of regret when they can’t. I last attended in 2019 in Portland, canceled my plans for 2020 in San Antonio as the pandemic loomed, and tuned in…
Read MoreThere’s Gnome Place Like Home
Much of my fiction is set in a place that resembles my hometown of National City, California and some of my characters live in a house that resembles the National City house I grew up in. I’ll argue that these similarities are due not to writerly laziness or lack of imagination, but to an emotional…
Read MoreRejection and Acceptance
Rejection is part of a writer’s life. We all know this. Rejections will outnumber acceptances. It’s a statistical certainty. So we learn to respond to rejection with acceptance—at least intellectually. But our very human emotions insist otherwise. When I receive a rejection for my work, the first thing I feel is disappointment, and then a…
Read MoreLiving Color: Angie Rubio Stories one year later
This month marks the one-year anniversary of the publication of Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories about a brown girl just wanting to be seen and heard. It’s been weird and fun, celebrating online. Each time after an event, watching faces disappear from my screen was an eerie and sad thing. At some events, the audience…
Read MoreA fondless farewell, una búsqueda sin fin, and a reminder of the round-and-round of life
A few January notes. Bye bye, Trump I woke up at 5:00 am on January 21 without an alarm and an hour and a half before my usual time to spill out of bed after another night of ragged sleep. I realized I was up in time to see Trump’s departure from the White House.…
Read MoreWhere resolution meets writing even when my resolution isn’t about writing
I have one firmly defined and achievable resolution, and I have one that is maybe not a resolution after all, but some vague hope. But I’m making a connection between that resolution and that hope, because I’m making a connection between that resolution and everything in my life. My resolution: To be able to have…
Read More