Carlos Manuel Álvarez & Vanessa Garcia: A Conversation

Carlos Manuel Álvarez is the author of the short story collection La tarde de los sucesos definitivos and the novel Los caídos. He is co-founder of the online magazine El Estornudo and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, El Malpensante, Letras Libres, Gatopardo, La Nación, Clarín, México, GQ, Vice, and on HuffPost. In The Tribe: Portraits of Cuba (Graywolf Press), translated by Frank Wynne, Álvarez uses the “crónica” form – a Latin American writing genre that blends reportage, narrative nonfiction, and novelistic techniques – to illuminate a particularly turbulent period in Cuban history, from the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States and the death of Fidel Castro to the convulsions of the San Isidro Movement. The Tribe shows a society in flux. It features athletes in exile, artists, nurses, underground musicians, and household names, dissident poets, the hidden underclass at a landfill, migrants attempting to make their way across Central America, fugitives escaping the FBI, dealers in the black market, revelers, and police officers, in the noisy Havana night.

Vanessa Garcia is a multidisciplinary writer who has written for Sesame Street and Caillou, among other TV shows. She is the author of the novel White Light; her pieces have been published in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, among others; and her plays – most recently the immersive hit The Amparo Experience – have been produced worldwide. She also co-hosts a podcast about family, Never the Empty Nest, with her mother and sister. In What the Bread Says: Baking with Love, History, and Papan (Cardinal Rule Press), Vanessa and her grandfather, Papan, set out on a baking adventure, making bread while traveling from Spain to France to Cuba and back again. This is how Garcia, when she was a little girl, learned to bake bread – and how she learned Papan’s story. Baking bread requires patience. While waiting for the dough to rise, rest, and bake, Papan tells Vanessa the amazing adventures of his life – and Vanessa learns about her roots, love, and family’s power, and how stories can carry us through no matter what.