Please join us for an in-person event welcoming Melissa Lozada-Oliva to celebrate the release of Candelaria! For this event, Melissa will be joined by Raych Jackson.
Please note: Pre-registration for this event is required. By pre-registering, you are verifying that you are fully vaccinated and will wear a mask throughout the entirety of the event.
"Candelaria is a masterpiece from a writer destined to produce many." —Jamie Loftus, author of Raw Dog
"Candelaria sticks to your soul and leaves you seeing the world and the people in it a bit differently." —Xochitl Gonzalez, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of Olga Dies Dreaming
Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents meets Cormac McCarthy's The Road
Your granddaughters are lost, Candelaria. Bianca, the brainy archaeologist, had to forfeit her life's work in Guatemala after her advisor seduced and deserted her. Paola, missing for over a decade, resurfaces in Boston as a brainwashed wellness cultist named Zoe. And Candy, the youngest, is a recovering addict who finds herself pregnant by a man she's not even sure ever existed. None of this concerns you of course, until a cataclysmic earthquake hits Boston. Now you must traverse the crumbling city to reach the Watertown Mall Old Country Buffet—for a reason you still cannot disclose—battling strange entities and your own strange past to save your granddaughters and possibly the world.
Author of Dreaming of You Melissa Lozada-Oliva delivers an unsettling, raucous debut novel written with tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp cultural criticism that unearths one troubled family’s legacy, feasting on diasporic identity politics and examining the limits of bodily autonomy and the dangers of wanting to belong at any cost.
A sweeping, mystical novel following three generations of women as they grapple with muddled pasts and predetermined futures, Candelaria is a story of love that eats us alive.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the author of peluda, Dreaming of You, and Candelaria. Her work has been featured in Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, NPR, and more. She lives in Brooklyn.
Rachel “Raych” Jackson is a writer, educator and voice actor. Her poems have gained over 2 million views on YouTube and have been published by many— including Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, The Shallow Ends, and Washington Square Review. She co-created and co-hosts Big Kid Show, a monthly variety show in Chicago. Raych’s debut collection EVEN THE SAINTS AUDITION (Button Poetry) won Best New Poetry Collection by a Chicagoan in the Chicago Reader fall of 2019. RAYCHJACKSON.COM
Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com no later than 14 days prior to the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.
