Alma García with Kristen Millares Young

Local author Alma García discusses her debut novel with local author and friend of the store Kristen Millares Young, who will also read from her work. All That Rises is a propulsive, atmospheric, possibly epic, often funny story of family secrets, lies, border politics, and discovering what it means to belong—within a family, as well as in the world beyond. In the border city of El Paso, Texas, two guardedly neighboring families have plunged headlong into a harrowing week. Rose Marie DuPre, wife and mother, has abandoned her family. On the doorstep of the Gonzales home, long-lost rebel Inez appears. As Rose Marie’s husband, Huck (manager of a maquiladora), and Inez’s brother, Jerry (a college professor), struggle separately with the new shape of their worlds, Lourdes, the Mexican maid who works in both homes, finds herself entangled in the lives of her employers, even as she grapples with a teenage daughter who only has eyes for el otro lado—life, American style. What follows is a story in which mysteries are unraveled, odd alliances are forged, and the boundaries between lives blur in destiny-changing ways—all in a place where the physical border between two countries is as palpable as it is porous, and the legacies of history are never far away. There are no easy solutions to the issues the characters face in this story, and their various realities—as undocumented workers, Border Patrol agents, the American supervisor of a Mexican factory employing an impoverished workforce—never play out against a black-and-white moral canvas. Instead, they are complex human beings with sometimes messy lives who struggle to create a place for themselves in a part of the world like no other, even as they are forced to confront the lives they have made. Alma García is the author of the novel All That Rises. Her short fiction has appeared as an award-winner in Narrative Magazine, Enizagam, Passages North, and Boulevard; has most recently appeared in phoebe and Kweli Journal; and has been published in anthologies including Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century and as part of the commissioned Data Epics project in partnership with the University of Washington School of Art and Design. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, is a past recipient of a fellowship from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. Originally from El Paso and later from Albuquerque, she lives in Seattle, where she teaches fiction writing at Hugo House, offers manuscript consultation, serves as a literary mentor through Artists Up, and is an occasional rock band violinist. Kristen Millares Young is a journalist, essayist, and author of the novel Subduction, a Paris Review staff pick called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post and “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year. She reviews books for the Washington Post. A former Hugo House Prose Writer-in-Residence, she is the editor of Seismic, a Washington State Book Award finalist. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team behind “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer. She is Seattle University’s 2023 Distinguished Visiting Writer.

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Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2022293-0

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