About me:

I’m a children’s author, a mom of three kids, a bilingual Latina, and a New Yorker.

I’m married to an economics professor who loves stats and numbers, so here is one stat that drives my work: today, a quarter of kids in the United States today are Latino. If you were to go to a school, library, or bookstore in your community right now, would 1 in 4 books represent a Latin experience? Would it even be close? What message does the absence of these books send to kids?

My books are inspired by my own childhood, as well as the history and culture of my people (before being a children’s author I earned a Ph.D. in History, focused on colonial Latin America).

Why subscribe?

If we ever have the chance to meet (at a bookstore? a conference?) you’ll discover that I’m someone who has a lot to say. It’s the entire reason I became an author—I just had so much to say that writing was the only way to get it out. Before joining Substack I had a long-time newsletter on another platform, primarily devoted to promoting my books and keeping readers up-to-date on my author and events. I’ll keep doing that on Substack, but I’ll also be writing about some of my other passions, including the business of publishing and my family life. This is the place to peek behind the curtain and see what it’s really like to be an author, to be creative while being a parent, and to live in an apartment in western Queens.

I grew up in a home where our doors were always open to friends, family, and many a stranger-turned-friend, and while I’m pretty sure throwing open my actual doors to all of you would be a fire hazard (see, New York apartment), I mean for this Substack to be the written equivalent.