Oscar Hijuelos: Thoughts Without Cigarettes, A Memoir

Hosted by Nina Serrano

$12 advance tickets at 800-838-3006
or: La Pena, Pegasus Books (3 locations), Walden Pond ($15 door) Benefits KPFA & La Pena.

Oscar Hijuelos, the first Latino winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (for his bestselling novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love) has also written:
Our House in the Last World (1983)
The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien (1993)
Mr. Ives' Christmas (1995)
Empress of the Splendid Season (1999)
A Simple Habana Melody (from when the world was good) (2002)
Dark Dude (2008)
Beautiful Maria of my Soul (2010)

After growing up in New York City as the son of Cuban immigrants in a Spanish-speaking home in a rough neighborhood, Hijuelos often explores in his work what it means to be an immigrant in America. He works with the universal themes of love, family, identity and music. His novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love was made into a popular film starring Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante. His first novel, Our House in the Last World, had already won several awards including the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Ingram-Merrill fellowship. In September of 2000 Hijuelos was honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. as part of the National Hispanic Heritage Awards. His books have already been translated into 25 languages. Currently he teaches at Duke University.

Nina Serrano is an award-winning poet, storyteller, writer and independent media producer. The author of Heartsongs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools, she served as an Alameda County Arts Commissioner and is a former director of San Francisco's Poetry in the Schools program. A longtime producer for KPFA Radio, she currently hosts LaRaza Chronicles and Open Book.