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An Afternoon with Julia Alvarez on Afterlife, in Conversation with Mitchell Kaplan

Sunday, April 26, 2020 @ 4:00 pm

Livestreamed via Crowdcast

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Presented by Miami Book Fair and Books & Books

This event is livestreamed via Crowdcast

Join us online as Books & Books’ Mitchell Kaplan sits down with Julia Alvarez, the internationally bestselling author of In The Time of the Butterflies and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents to discuss her first adult novel in fifteen years, Afterlife. We welcome you to engage and ask questions as you join us live from your balcony or bedroom for an inspiring conversation online!

Julia Alvarez también contestará preguntas del público en español.
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About the Book:
Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves — lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack — but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.

Afterlife is “a gorgeously intimate portrait of an immigrant writer and recent widow carving out hope in the face of personal and political grief.” (O, The Oprah Magazine) Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including — maybe especially — members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?

About the Author:
Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

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Language
English
Occurrence
All Year