Gabrielle Fuentes discusses her novel Are We Ever Our Own with guest, author Vera Kurain!
About Are We Ever Our Own
Moving between Cuba and the U.S., the stories in Are We Ever Our Own trace the paths of the women of the far-flung Armando Castell family.
Related but unknown to each other, these women are exiles, immigrants, artists, outsiders, all in search of a sense of self and belonging. The owner of a professional mourning service investigates the disappearance of her employees. On the eve of the Cuban revolution, a young woman breaks into the mansion where she was once a servant to help the rebels and free herself. A musician in a traveling troupe recounts the last day she saw her father.
Linked by theme and complex familial bonds, these stories shift across genres and forms to excavate the violence wreaked on women's bodies and document the attempt to create something meaningful in the face of loss. They ask: who do we belong to? What, if anything, belongs to us?
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Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes is the author of the novel The Sleeping World and the short story collection Are We Ever Our Own, winner of the BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize. She has received fellowships from Lighthouse Works, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, Millay Colony, Anderson Center, and the Blue Mountain Center. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, One Story, The New England Review, The Common, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing and Latinx literature at the University of Maryland.
Vera Kurian is a writer and scientist based in Washington DC. Her debut novel, NEVER SAW ME COMING, was published by Park Row Books (US) and Harvill Secker, Vintage (UK) in September 2021. Her short fiction has been published in magazines such as Glimmer Train, Day One, and The Pinch. She has a PhD in Social Psychology, where she studied intergroup relations, ideology, and quantitative methods.
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Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. This event will be simultaneously live streamed on our YouTube page!