2020 WALDEN AWARD FINALIST SPEECH

Delivered 11.23.2020 at the ALAN Workshop Thank you so much to the committee for selecting Patron Saints of Nothing as a finalist for the Amelia Walden Award. I know you probably read a ton of books this past year, and I know the difficulty of then having to select only 5 titles. It also means …

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OUR TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH

Americans who read Patron Saints of Nothing often tell me that my story made them cry. It means a lot to me that something I’ve written moves people so deeply, but our tears are not enough.  At midnight in the Philippines on July 18, the country’s Anti-Terror Law (ATL) went into effect. Its vague language …

COVER REVEAL!

On Monday, Penguin Teen revealed the cover of PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING, my next book, out in June 2019 from Kokila/Penguin Random House! You can see the full cover and read an exclusive excerpt at the link above. The book tells the story of Jay Reguero, a Filipino American teen, who travels to the Philippines …

BOOK #3 ON THE WAY!

After five months of sitting on this secret, I can finally announce that my next book, PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING, will be out in summer of 2019 with Kokila Books (a new imprint of Penguin Random House)! (Add it to your TBR shelf on Goodreads!)  This has been in the works for several months, so …

SHIFTING THE SPOTLIGHT

In what I believe is the first photograph of me that exists, there is a woman standing behind me who is neither my mother nor my lola (with whom I lived with for the first year of my life). Instead it was a woman casually referred to as the “maid.” In my visits to the …