Desiree Prieto Groft's Blog

There are many breakthroughs that come from writing novels and the writing process in general. Joan Didion may have famously said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down,” but it has long been known that writing, along with speaking and reading, is a tool for deep thinking—a practice explored by greats like Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and Montaigne.

Getting our thoughts on paper can also lead to profound conclusions about our lives, shared struggles, and ways forward. It can even provide closure.

While writing some of that closure for my own novel—spoiler alert—one of my characters states, “They say it takes a village to raise a child. I think it takes a village to raise an adult.” Since publishing the novel, readers have repeatedly quoted that line back to me.

Without spoiling too much more, one of the final chapters of the novel includes some "real talk" about tragically falling behind in childhood due to heartbreaking family circumstances. It was such a heavy chapter to write. I cried through it so many times. I didn’t want to include it in the novel.

But that real talk illustrates character motivations—essentially how and why we do the things we do and how our childhood can affect our future, our own sad and happy endings, our own heroes’ or heroines’ journeys.

Since publishing the novel, I’ve been thinking even more about the deeper meaning of childhood. Maybe that's because I published Girl, Unemployed a year after my own daughter was born, and now I’m responsible for someone else’s childhood and for building someone else’s village. But here’s the thought I want to leave you with, one I keep coming back to:

Children who play catch-up as children become adults who play catch-up as adults.

Maybe to move forward and embrace our purpose, we need to give ourselves—and our past—grace. We weren’t always given the tools to navigate life, and that’s okay. But what if we keep going anyway and allow ourselves the chance to catch up, so we can fully step into the life we are meant to live?

Go on and build that village as an adult.

I'm excited to share an upcoming event in downtown San Antonio!

Come join Girl, Unemployed for an afternoon of "Drafts and Drinks"  to celebrate San Antonio Startup Week 🚀

We'll discuss epic fails and all those rough drafts and rewrites on the way to something great.

Link to RSVP below 👇

https://tinyurl.com/DraftsandDrinks

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month, and I want to get real with you.

We’re told to use this time for celebration, visibility, and pride—to honor the stories that make up our shared history. So here is innocent me with my brother Evan—smiling, unaware, before I even knew what ‘Hispanic Heritage Month’ was supposed to mean.

But like I ask my students when we read literature: what is this about? And also, what is this really about?

One answer is surface-level. The other is layered.

For example, Girl, Unemployed is about messy jobs and second chances. But it’s also about so much more—success and systemic hurdles, lack of opportunities, money, community, and family. It’s about how all those forces can collide to lift us up or pull us down.

Similarly, my main character confronts our concerns on race relations—are they sincere, or just hot-button topics that play on our emotions and consumer culture? Somehow, it always ties back to money and jobs. All roads lead to jobs.

Below is a cutting one-page excerpt from my book about a Hispanic origin story. After reading it, tell me: what does Hispanic Heritage Month mean to you? For me, it’s not just about visibility. It’s about wrestling with complicated truths that don’t always look like the colorful flowers, streamers, or nostalgic childhood photos often used to tell our stories this month.

Excerpt from Chapter 2, Jess’s “origin story,” Girl, Unemployed

“You know, I was talking to Elsa today,” my mother said, as if Hazelnut wasn’t all over her, crouched along the carpet. “And Elsa said my kids are boomerangs. Have you heard of this? Boomerangs?” My mother huffed with each scrub her hand made against the carpet. “We called it late bloomers in my day, but it makes sense. Elsa says, 'like a boomerang, Ariana. You throw a boomerang out in the air, and it comes right back.’”

“Thanks, Mom. Lots of insight on my birthday and super helpful. It motivates me to get off the couch, I mean, out of your kitchen, like all the women who came before you. Oh, look at that. I come home to find you still in the kitchen.”

My mother ignored me, as she usually did when I got all feministy. She stopped mid-scrub like she had a premonition, glaring off into the distance. “Elsa says, your home is a revolving door, Ariana, a revolving door. I know you love your kids, but you should make them pay some rent.”

“Mom! Who has Elsa been hanging around with in her Sharpie eyebrows? I’m paying for utilities and groceries, as agreed. Plus gas, insurance, and a new lease on a car so Missy can stop driving me everywhere. How much do you think I get for unemployment?”

 “I know. Can you believe that? I said to Elsa, ‘Elsa, where did you get this from?’ She said, ‘the other ladies that work with me at the new Southwest Airlines Call Center.’”

“I see San Antonio is still vying for those competitive, blue-collared call center jobs. Wait, will you tell her I’m looking for a temp job and that I have travel experience?”

“It’s a bilingual call center job, so you must speak fluent Spanish.”

“Your fault, Mom,” I said in a tongue-in-cheek tone.

When my parents were growing up on the border, society taught their generation that they and their children would never prosper in the U.S. if they spoke Spanish. Being white had equaled economic prosperity, power, and wealth in the U.S. As a punishment, the nuns at my parents’ school would charge them up to a quarter for every Spanish word they accidentally spoke in class. So, when my parents grew up and started their family, they raised my brothers and me to speak only English, even though Spanish was their first language. But enter the 1990s with Selena, J. Lo., and Ricky Martin. Big corporations like McDonald's, Proctor & Gamble, and Liz Claiborne began to see the Hispanic market as an untapped resource. They started spending their advertising dollars in markets like Telemundo and Univision. We became re-branded as “Latino.” That word made me feel like I needed big J. Lo Hoop earrings, dark purple lipstick, and those trending Homies T-shirts with a picture of a big, souped-up hooptie.

“So basically, Mom, I spent the first half of my life shamed not to speak Spanish, and now I’m going to spend the rest of my life shamed by both Hispanics and non-Hispanics—sorry, Latinos—because I don’t speak Spanish? Why aren’t ‘Anglos’ shamed for not speaking Gaelic, Finnish, or whatever language that is consistent with their ancestry? Because it’s about money, Mother, just so you know. I promise you, the world doesn’t suddenly care about Hispanics or Latinos, but money does.”

Something I discussed on The Inside Story Podcast was how to give ourselves grace and space to grieve during times of failure, hardship, and loss.

Let me emphasize that so it’s loud and clear: we need to give ourselves the gift of the grieving process.

Grieving can take many forms. For example, while sometimes cringe, my main character in Girl, Unemployed had to own her anger, frustration, bitterness, and resentment. All those feelings were real—they came from the sting of an epic fail and the realization that even though she thought she had done everything “right” in school and the workforce, she was still left with nothing—less than nothing—buried under a mountain of debt.

Of course, it’s never healthy to stay in a negative headspace for too long, but it’s important to let those feelings out. During my own grieving process after losing my travel job with a luxury European tour operator, I turned to books that spoke directly to that mindset of anger, frustration, bitterness, and resentment.

One of my favorites was Jen Lancaster’s Bitter Is the New Black, because the protagonist gave voice to the anger I was feeling—but in a funny, ironic, and ultimately hopeful way. What began as a journey through anger and bitterness ended with a promising way forward.

If you’re in that space today, here’s the book—with its ridiculous but spot-on subtitle:

Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

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Hearst Tower, Midtown Manhattan

This summer, the Labor Department noted that the number of unemployed people—7.2 million—changed little and that over 1.8 million people have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. For young college graduates and young adults ages 22-27, the struggle is even worse, with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noting that unemployment rates are at a near-decade high, excluding the pandemic. The rise of AI is also eliminating entry-level and white-collar jobs in tech, finance, and more — pressuring desperate candidates to compete for a role by “performing without pay.”

While performing without pay may seem like a harmless practice at first, it can often turn into a grueling homework assignment without the promise of a reward or graduation. The job application process once required candidates to submit a résumé, a job application letter, and perhaps some references. Now, employers require prospective candidates to jump through numerous unpaid hoops, starting with long interview panels and ending with more demands—from creating mock ad campaigns to completing grueling 24-hour editing tests, conducting audits, and showcasing hundreds of formulas in Excel spreadsheets.

I know from experience. One of my “favorite” homework assignments performing without pay was for Cosmopolitan for Latinas, which ran from 2012 to 2015. The editor sent me an edit test on a Tuesday morning. She requested I return the edit test by Thursday, even though I needed to conduct thorough research on the company’s brand and voice, reading and studying in-depth articles before brainstorming, strategizing, and executing the scope of work.

Nevertheless, I took that daunting homework assignment seriously, clearing my schedule and consulting a dear editor friend at Newsweek for final feedback.

The edit test instructions alone were 2,000 words. They asked me to complete all of the following with a Cosmo for Latinas audience in mind:

I had to come up with 20 heds and deks for stories I thought could run on Cosmo for Latinas in a given day, covering a mix of categories: sex/relationships; entertainment/celeb; style/beauty; career/women's issues/politics. My heds and deks needed to include news posts, features, and evergreen content. I needed to pick a day to do this, so I was working with that day's news.

I also had to provide a tweet and Facebook status for 10 of my ideas. I then needed to provide a list of several freelancers I would recruit. I also had to come up with two regular franchises that could run on Cosmo for Latinas (Examples: Get That Life, Ask Logan). I had to write news stories about Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s divorce, as well as another news story on immigration. Lastly, I had to edit two stories to make them suitable to run on Cosmo for Latinas. One story featured John Leguizamo and his new movie, Chef. The other story was the entire monthly horoscope for the whole year.

I killed the edit test, finally uploading my homework assignment to my email and clicking send. It landed me an interview at Cosmo for Latinas at Hearst Tower in Manhattan. The interview went well, too.

Or so I’d thought. 

But unfortunately, Cosmo for Latinas decided to go with a different candidate without so much as breaking up with me first.

Obviously, that meant I had to stalk this different candidate online. Yes, I stalked employers and employees online as if they were an unrequited love, and as if that would help me with the grieving process. Because one of the saddest parts about the practice of performing without pay is what happens to candidates who don't get chosen. If all those tests and hoops don’t pay off with a real-paying job, many candidates pre-emptively sign a contract stating they cannot sue the company if they use similar ideas or content. Essentially, these companies are taking advantage of candidates by having them work for them for free.

Even more, the candidates have already become committed to an employer and role. After putting in the hours and hard work, they get excited and start envisioning a promising new future with that employer. But when they are rejected and even ghosted after all that hard work—often without so much as the slightest response or automated rejection letter—it’s personal.

After all, the employer took the candidates out to dinner, invited them into their world, and showed them what kind of life they could have together. They lured the candidate into bed but didn’t call the next day. However, there are easier ways to date. A few of those ways include kindly asking candidates to provide a portfolio of previous work, references, and/or clips.

Breaking up is hard to do, but hopefully, on this tough Labor Day, employers can remember that there are better ways to choose candidates than sleeping with them and ghosting them the next day. Requiring candidates to perform without pay lacks respect, compassion, humanity, empathy—all those pretty little soft skills their HR departments seek when hiring the right candidate.

Asking candidates to perform without pay dangles the hope of a paycheck that rarely comes. This toxic practice turns the hiring process into a prolonged, unpaid job, preying on people’s dreams and desperation. If employers can't be team players, then they have no business soliciting business or inviting others to join their team.

Click here to vote now: https://tinyurl.com/DesSXSW2026

Many years ago, I was a print columnist and blogger for the San Antonio Current. My main beat was fashion, which meant I often got to profile talented local artists — many of whom went on to shine nationally and internationally at events like New York Fashion Week.

During that time, I also covered the only two years in South by Southwest’s (SXSW) history that featured a fashion component, Style X (2011 and 2012). You can check out some of my fun SXSW coverage from those years [here], [here], [here], and [here] (forgive the archive images for not holding up).

Several years later, I had the joy of supporting one of my best friends at SXSW when she launched her novel VentureGirls with HarperCollins — a book that went on to become a USA Today bestseller.

Over the years, it has been a privilege to celebrate and cheer on so many strong and talented creators. Which is why it feels surreal — and incredibly exciting — to now be one of them at SXSW 2026!

If you haven’t voted yet, it only takes 30 seconds to create a quick login and “heart” our Girl, Unemployed panel. This panel pays it forward — it’s all about serving and supporting other working women and creators so they can have their turn to shine, too.

[Click here to vote for our panel]

“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book and remembering—because you can’t take it all in at once.” —Audrey Hepburn

I love this quote I found in an Audrey Hepburn biography. I read it many years ago, but thought about it often. It stayed in my heart throughout all the failed Girl, Unemployed drafts. So naturally, the quote just had to be included on one of the opening pages of my novel.

I had visited many museums while living abroad, in the States, and while working in travel, so it was meaningful to me that Hepburn found the connection between our lives and museums.

While seemingly simple, Hepburn’s metaphor of life being like tearing through a museum struck me as brilliant because we are all, in essence, living artifacts who get to choose how to curate our lives on any given day. So, here is a crucial question I want to ask you about yours:

If there were a big museum opening of your life tomorrow, what would it look like?

This question comes with the weight and responsibility of our choices. Asking ourselves this question makes us realize that we must be present, intentional, and purposeful about our lives. Every. Single. Day.

When we're young, we are limited in our life experiences, so we aren't as discriminating when life invites us to participate in all these opportunities: Experience over here! No, experience over here! Pick me! Come here! Experience me, me, me, me!

We naively say yes to experiences without considering the consequences later. Yes to drinking too much. Yes to nightclubs. Yes to toxic friends, jobs, and relationships. 

But as we get older, we grow to understand that time is limited and we can only create our best work and lives when we are at our best selves, which means being ruthless with our time and who we’re giving it away to, as well as how and why.

And especially at what cost.

So let’s curate our museums starting yesterday. Let’s be ruthless. Ruthless. RUTHLESS. I love that word, ruthless.

Oooh, that will be the title of another one of our bloggy blog, blog, blogs…

Feeling incredibly honored Girl, Unemployed was named a staff pick for Yellow Bird Editors' "Success in the Press" series!

Working with the brilliant editor Sarah Kocek—a Yale grad and fellow NYC MFA alum—was both humbling and rewarding.

I was scared to publish this novel because when we want something to be good we often censor the truth. But we cannot get to the good we seek without exposing the raw truth first.

Sara understood my voice, genre(s), and let that truth shine. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with her.

Read the feature here: Yellow Bird: Yellow Bird Editors — Success In the Press: Girl, Unemployed by Desiree Prieto Groft https://share.google/Rm7o8oHewawwMWbzz

Pheeeew, I can't believe it's already August! The first six months of the new year were the busiest between work, book launch, and family.

So I took a break in July to catch my breath, get some rest, and enjoy some much needed family time. 

I hope you stuck around because I'm still here! And I’m excited to continue sharing book news, info, and events these next few weeks. As the fall hits and I get busier with students, my posts might be a bit more sporadic, but don’t be shy. Feel free to drop me a line, comment, or DM on my small but mighty Insta :)