Great Start to a Writer's Year

One of the greatest rewards any writer can receive is the acknowledgment of academicians who devote their lives to the study of one's chosen genre. Suzanne Bost and Frances R. Aparicio, in their introduction to The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, published in August 2012, mention several authors who are expanding the borders of US Latino and Latino literature. I am thrilled to have been included among those who are bringing Central America into the literary landscape.

Learning this made my day. In the introduction to The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, Bost and Aparicio write:

There is a need to approach this cannon in its plural form rather than as a singular entity.  We need to consider a diversity of Latino/a literary cannons, partly reflected in the heterogeneous regional profiles across the United States that mirror the specific histories of migration and settlement of different national groups.  For instance, Chicano/a literature may be more predominantly taught and read in California and the Southwest, while Latino/a Caribbean authors are predominant in the East Coast.  Another area of fluidity within the US Latino/a literary cannon is the increasing visibility of emerging authors and literary voices that are transforming the US Latino/a literaryscape.  The demographic diversification that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s is now being revealed in the new novels by US Guatemalan authors, such as Héctor Tobar, by US Nicaraguan voices such as that of Silvio Sirias, and by Salvadorean-American authors such as Marcos McPeek Villatoros and Leticia Hernández Linares.