Publication News!

We're thrilled for Raquel Vasquez Gilliland (Poetry MFA, '17), who recently revealed the cover of her forthcoming YA novel, Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything. The publication date is Aug. 4, 2020, from Simon Pulse (Simon and Schuster), but early readers are delivering rapturous reviews at GoodReads. The book is described as an "astonishing, genre-bending novel about a Mexican American teen who discovers profound connections between immigration, folklore, and alien life." Or, as one of her readers says, "Vasquez Gilliland's beautiful, poetic, heartbreaking voice builds the desert world of Arizona into a wonderland of in-between spaces and histories within histories." You can pre-order her novel from Amazon, BAM! (Books-A-Million), and Indiebound.
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Describing Raquel's work as poetic is apt since she has already published two collections of poems, Dirt and Honey and Tales from the House of Vasquez. Follow Raquel on Twitter as @poet_raquelvgil, and check out her website. There you'll also find her newsletter, links to essays she published in 2019, and information about her participation in Pitch Wars, a program in which authors, editors, and industry interns work with writers for three months to help them present their manuscripts to an Agent Showcase. (Her author photo is pretty terrific, too.)