Location
About
- 4:30 p.m., Thursday, March 12
- Conversation / Q&A
- Recital Hall, UAlbany Performing Arts Center, University at Albany
- 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Kirstin Valdez Quade, celebrated contemporary author, explores the experiences of working-class Latinx New Mexicans in her fiction. Her debut story collection, Night at the Fiestas (2015), won the National Book Foundation "5 under 35" Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for first book in any genre. The New York Times called the stories "legitimate masterpieces" in a "haunting and beautiful debut."
Her first novel, The Five Wounds (2021), recounts the tribulations of the Padillo family of Las Penas, New Mexico: Amadeo, a recovering alcoholic struggling with poverty and unemployment; Angel, his pregnant 15-year-old daughter; and Yolanda, his ailing mother. The book won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was named a "Best book of the Year" by NPR.