Fragments from AWP 2025

Dusk at my grandmother's house once sounded like sirens – like the wailing truck that circled town, spraying pesticide children would chase.

In a small, single-room cabin, men spoke to one another in a mix of Spanish, which I could understand, and Mapudungun, which I could not.

"His head hit the tile. He hadn’t fallen, he was pulled – of that Cash was sure."

I give myself grace, the kind I used to pray for on Sundays like this one.

Last year, a New Yorker told me that every time he flies into LA, he feels like he's arriving in Gotham City.

You can believe me, or label these incidents as illusions.

Las Vegas has transformed authentic history into lucrative novelty in what might be the peak manifestation of America.

There were always clues.

As regards my job and the state of Los Angeles and my body and my government and the lives of my friends as well as my health

A girl grips my arm in the dark. Everyone else is playing in another room. I can’t go, can’t return to them. This started as a game.

Up the street, hills that had been dark and drowsy when I laid down were dancing.

I was putting away clean dishes, bent over the open dishwasher, when suddenly something behind me shattered.

Mary Schmich advises, "Keep your old love letters." I don't have many of those. I have, however, kept my old letters.

One of the most enduring stories that I carry comes from my mother's Midwestern family. It reappears in my writing again and again.

I discover myself at the crossroads of different places and forms and communities.

Of the books that are published, few find wide audiences. Writers can’t control those outcomes, but they can finish what they start.

In conversations about parenthood, I don’t have advice or stories. In fact, I still identify with the infant, or the toddler.

I wonder if I might start – or end – each week with a crónica, a uniquely Latin American medium.