Ask the Author: J.L. Torres
Answered Questions (7)
J.L. Torres
A colleague sent me an article about Puerto Rican adolescents who were shipped to the Carlisle Industrial Indian school. I was shocked to learn of this incident and that motivated me to write a story about it. After writing that story, I wondered if there were other similar stories embedded in the history of the Puerto Rican diaspora. So I started researching and that led to Migrations, my second short collection, which won the Tomas Rivera Book Prize.
J.L. Torres
By reading writers who have mastered their craft and own a unique style. Writers who invite you to the world they construct and introduce you to engaging people. Writers who write books that make you feel and think hard about important issues that affect us all. Those are the types of books that make me want to write.
J.L. Torres
Seek and consider good advice, but always stay true to your vision. And read, read, read, then read some more.
J.L. Torres
The pleasure derived from creating something out of nothing.
J.L. Torres
I have never suffered writer's block. I journal constantly, always jotting ideas that pop into my head. I also take my time approaching the writing phase of any project. When I reach it, I have thought enough of what I'm doing and where I want to go that I have little problem starting. Once I'm going, the writing pretty much flows.
J.L. Torres
A novella about Roberto Clemente stuck in that liminal space between life and death. The book focuses on this fictional Clemente's struggle to understand his life as an Afro-Puerto Rican. To guide him, famous past Afro-Puerto Ricans visit him, at times taking him back to moments in his life so that he can re-contextualize them and find truth and direction.
J.L. Torres
Daughters of the Stone, Dahlma Llanos Figueroa
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders
Mexican Gothic, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders
Mexican Gothic, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance
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