READING WITH LAS COMADRES
For Hispanic
Heritage Month A
Gift to You from Las Comadres Para Las Americas in
partnership with the
American Association of Publishers,
http://www.publishers.org
Publishing
Latino Voices of the Americas
The
First Teleconference in our
"Reading with
Las Comadres" Author's Teleconference Series
Tuesday,
September 18, 2007
8:00pm
Eastern Time, 7:00pm Central Time, 6:00pm Mountain Time,
5:00pm Pacific Time
Join
Cecilia Samartin and comadres
around the nation on September 18, as she interviews author
Mayra Montero, author of
Dancing to”Almendra”
translated by Edith
Grossman
Published
by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
YOU
MISSED IT! If you'd like to know what you missed, here's the
link to the recorded interview:
CLICK
HERE!
Have you
ever wanted to know how an author writes a book? Where she
gets her ideas? Who or what is her inspiration? What she hoping
to accomplish? Now you can have these and other questions
answered in the Reading with Las Comadres
LIVE Teleconference Series!
Each month
comadre guest interviewers, to be announced monthly, will
interview a comadre author, whose latest book has just been
released, in a teleconference. Don't wait to sign-up because
the first 30 to register will
receive a free copy of the book compliments of the
publisher! YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE TELECONFERENCE, IF YOU RECEIVE A GIFT BOOK. To register
just fill out the form below. You will receive a confirmation
with the date, time, and call in numbers for the teleconference.
On the day of the evemt, just phone in and listen to the interview!
You may send questions to the author via Nora Comstock until
two days prior to the teleconference.
Dancing
to “Almendra”
by Mayra Montero Translated by Edith Grossman
Cuban
journalist Joaquín Porrata’s
assignment to cover the mysterious death of a hippopotamus
takes an extraordinary turn when a zookeeper links it to the
assassination of Mafia Capo Umberto Anastasia. Since his accidental
presence eleven years earlier at the meeting where the hit
on Bugsy Siegel was ordered, Joaquín has been fascinated by the underworld that controls
Cuba
and its casinos. Returning to the city of Mayra
Montero’s birth, to a tumultuous time of both
glamour and corruption, Dancing
to “Almendra” charts its course through
the Havana of 1957.
Back
at the scene of the crime, the zookeeper pulls Joaquín
aside to tell him the hippo’s death was a message, delivered
too late, to Anastasia. Suddenly Joaquín’s
investigation zips through Cuba’s Chinatown and the Aires
Libres, to the New York district
attorney’s office and a notorious barbershop in the Park
Sheraton Hotel, into casinos and cabaret dressing rooms, bringing
him face-to-face with aging film stars, petty thugs, and the
infamous Meyer Lansky, and ultimately leading him into the
lovely arms—arm—of a former magician’s assistant.
Interleaved
with Joaquín’s investigation
to solve the murders of Anastasia and the hippo is the story
of the mysterious Yolanda, one-time circus performer, dresser
of showgirls, mother of an aerialist, and girlfriend of nightclub
owner Louis Santos. As Joaquín races
to file his article, Yolanda reflects on a life of heartbreak—and
of adventure—that has brought her to Joaquín.
Author
Biography
Mayra Montero was born in Havana in 1952 and was educated
at a Catholic nun’s school. Her father, a well-known
television writer and actor, moved the family to Puerto
Rico after the revolution. Montero studied journalism
in Mexico
and Puerto Rico and worked as a correspondent in Central America
and the Caribbean. She has published novels, stories and essays
in Spanish. Her novels, In
the Palm of Darkness,
The Messenger, The Last Night I Spent with You, The Red of His Shadow, Deep Purple, and Captain of the Sleepers,
are available in English, all in translations by Edith Grossman.
She currently lives in Puerto Rico
where she writes a weekly column for a local newspaper, El
Nuevo Día.
Edith Grossman, the winner of the 2006
PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, is the translator
of many works by major Spanish-language authors, including
Gabriel García Márquez,
Mario Vargas Llosa, and Miguel de
Cervantes, as well as Mayra Montero. She lives in New York City.
_______________________________________
Interviewing
author Mayra Montero will be guest interviewer comadre
Cecilia
Samartin
Cecilia Samartin was born in Havana
in the midst of Fidel Castro's revolution. She grew up in
Los Angeles as a fully bicultural, bilingual
American. She studied psychology at UCLA and Marriage and
Family Therapy at Santa Clara University. Cecilia has practiced within
the Latino communities in some of the most impoverished inner
city areas of San Jose and Los
Angeles. She lives with her British-born
husband in San Gabriel, California.
She also is an author whose first novel, Broken
Paradise, was our 3rd Windows into the Soul
interview. The book was published by Simon and Schuster.
________________________________________
Buy your
book from a local bookstore or order from Amazon. Las Comadres
is an Amazon affiliate and we make a small commission on each
book sold. These funds will be used to keep our teleconferences
accessible.
use
the link, below, to order from amazon:
