More ¡Ajuas! This time, for Lorraine M. Lopez!!!

My confidant and fellow Macondista LORRAINE M. LOPEZ is among this year's PEN/Faulkner Fiction nominees! I can't tell you how thrilled I am for her. Also nominated are Sherman Alexie for War Dances; Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna; Lorrie Moore for A Gate at the Stairs; and Colson Whitehead for Sag Harbor. When I spoke to Lorraine about her nomination, she was still in a daze... started to veer into that, "I can't believe my luck" talk. There may be some luck involved, but no amount of luck will get crap writing this kind of recognition. Read about Lorraine and her fellow nominees here.

Who says Latinos aren't connected?

San Antonio's Jo Ann Yolanda Hernández is working it at her blog and website BronzeWord Latino Writers. And her links list is prodigious! Check it out here.

Q&A with Joy Castro now online

The follow-up to Joy Castro's remarkable review can be found here.

Joy Castro reviews DAMAS

Joy Castro is a writer (The Truth Book), a professor, the bloggera behind joycastro.com, and an esteemed colleague through our membership in Macondo, the writers' collective created by Sandra Cisneros. I'm proud to call Joy a home girl—she lives in my home town of Lincoln, Nebraska, where she's a professor of English at the University of Nebraska.

Joy has totally blown me away with her enormously thoughtful critique of Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz. Click here to read what she has to say about the book, Latina Letters, and where Damas falls in the spectrum of popular women's literature.

Q&A With LATINIDAD's Marcela Landres now online.

I first met Marcela Landres at a seminar she conducted at San Antonio's Gemini Ink. My goodness—that was at least ten years ago! I'm delighted that Marcela and I were able to reconnect after all these years. Please read the Q & A she so graciously posted in her Latinidad website by clicking here.

Posting on the fly

Belinda is taste testing the "Quince Cocktail" for the book release party Aug. 18. YUM!

Check the Events Calendar Post for more information on the book release party and upcoming readings.

Floored, honored, and touched

I have been answering questions from two, enormously talented blog queens: Marcela Landres and Joy Castro. Marcela has an e-zine called Latinidad and Joy—a talented writer and academic hailing from my home state of Nebraska (yes, Nebraska--Latin@s are EVERYWHERE, esa!). But back to La Joy: she writes about Latinas and literature, crossing back and forth over that boundary between popular and literary fiction—just like we Latin@s do as part of everyday life!

The thoughtful questions Marcela and Joy have come up with, the care with which they are assembling their pieces about me and Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, and ultimately, the corazón each of them brings, not only to my work, but to their everyday practice, working with, reading, devouring, and loving words....it's simply amazing.

I am honored to be included in their work.

I'll share links to their articles when they're posted.