Remembering Rudy Anaya

My article in the El Paso Times to remember Rudy Anaya. I think it will run in Sunday's print edition in the Opinion section. When the Times asked me to do it earlier this week, I dropped everything. I needed to do it for Rudy. Que descanse en paz.

https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/opinion/2020/07/09/sergio-troncoso-remembers-great-writer-friend-rudolfo-rudy-anaya/5405469002/

Sergio Troncoso Wins Silver Award from Foreword Reviews

A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son (Cinco Puntos Press) wins the Silver Award for Multicultural Adult Fiction in ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Awards.

"This is a world-class collection." ---Luis Alberto Urrea

"The El Paso author's newest collection depicts contemporary Mexican American life with a characteristic blend of sorrow and humor. It's his most powerful work yet, and an essential addition to the Latinx canon." ---The Texas Observer

"Chicano literature began with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when a sizable Latino population was separated from its land and heritage. Sergio Troncoso has written brilliantly of this disruption and its pull." ---Journal of Alta California

https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/books/a-peculiar-kind-of-immigrants-son/

Sergio Troncoso: 2020 Graduation Message

El Paso Matters asked author Sergio Troncoso (A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, Cinco Puntos Press) to record a short graduation message for all students graduating in 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. He believes in always encouraging the next generation, especially from his hometown of El Paso, Texas.

https://youtu.be/HPb5ql32ZBg

Virtual Book Groups: Sergio Troncoso

If you are reading A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son or any other of Sergio Troncoso’s books, he will meet with your book group by Zoom for an hour or two. Zoom is easy to use, and the host (Sergio Troncoso) sets up the meeting and emails all participants with a link, which they click to enter the ‘virtual meeting.’ Sergio will be able to see and hear all the participants on his computer, and they will be able to see and hear him on their computers too. You can talk about any book by Sergio that the group has read, ask him questions about his novels, stories or essays, and discuss the craft of writing with him as well. Each month he will only do a few of these Virtual Book Groups as his time and schedule permits.

Write to him at SergioTroncoso(AT)gmail(DOT)com and tell him about your book group, and he’ll let you know quickly about his future availability. It’s easy to schedule, and Sergio loves talking to his readers.

https://sergiotroncoso.com/virtualbookgroups/index.htm

Contra Viento Journal Intervews Sergio Troncoso

My interview in Contra Viento Journal was published today. Thank you Gabriel Dozal and Sean McCoy.

"I also think growing up dirt poor on the border had a profound effect on me. My neighborhood in Ysleta hasn’t changed too much: it’s become working-class, when it was actually poorer in the ’60s and ’70s. Not even working class. I believe, and have always believed, in los de abajo, the very poor, and what they have to contribute, the ideas they explore, the importance of their lives, even if so many others just ignore them. If that’s empathy, then I wholeheartedly embrace it. But even that word, ‘empathy,’ seems studied somehow: these are just the people I knew, the people I grew up with, my people."

https://contravientojournal.org/radiant-perspectives-on-the-border-conversation-sergio-troncoso-peculiar-kind-of-immigrants-son/

Midwest Book Review: A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son

A great review of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son (Cinco Puntos Press) from the Midwest Book Review. Thank you.

“An inherently fascinating and compelling read from first page to last, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son is an extraordinary and deftly written collection, and one that is especially and unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Hispanic American Literature & Fiction collections.”

http://midwestbookreview.com/wbw/feb_20.htm#GeneralFiction

Sergio Troncoso Wins Kay Cattarulla Award

Yesterday I received this news: The first story "Rosary on the Border" in A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son (Cinco Puntos Press) won the 2020 Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story ($1,000) from the Texas Institute of Letters. Thank you to the judges for selecting my story.

On this crazy day, I also found out that I have an offer for an English and Spanish audio book for A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son. So it's been a heckuva day!

http://www.texasinstituteofletters.org/news/2020-TIL-Winners-News-Release.pdf

Literal Magazine Review: A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son

Review in Literal Magazine of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son (Cinco Puntos Press):

“The short stories in A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, his latest book, are all linked: many share the same characters, and some—in a neat narrative trick—even cause one to entirely reevaluate a previous story. Generally, they move from stark, spare realism in the first few stories, to lush dystopian surrealism in the last few. Although many stories take place far from the Rio Grande, this is a robust, proud exploration of what it is like to be (on what one character calls) “the edge of the edge of the United States”: to be the child of immigrants, to be straddling two worlds—lines between love and sex, past and future, civilization and brutality, life and death.”

http://literalmagazine.com/a-peculiar-kind-of-immigrants-son-review/

Behind the Pages Interviews Sergio Troncoso

Diane Goshgarian of Behind the Pages interviews Sergio Troncoso at 22-CityView in Cambridge, Massachusetts on November of 26, 2019. They have an in depth discussion about A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, particularly the first three stories, "Rosary on the Border," "New Englander," and "A Living Museum of Love."

https://youtu.be/NFn6fTS8ncU

Writers Corner Live TV Show Interviews Sergio Troncoso

Thank you to Bridgetti Lim Banda (Cape Town) and Mary Elizabeth Jackson (Nashville) for our discussion yesterday on Writers Corner Live TV Show. Just loved chatting with both of you about A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son (Cinco Puntos Press) and the continuing literary influence of my maternal grandmother, Doña Dolores Rivero, who is never far from my thoughts.

 

https://youtu.be/4Kxo-Mv_-Lg