Gwendolyn Zepeda

Start: Jan 28 2010 7:00 pm

End: Jan 28 2010 8:30 pm

Brazos is extremely pleased to celebrate the launch of Lone Star Legend with award-winning Houston author Gwen Zepeda, who will give a reading and signing of her new novel at the event. Join us!

When Sandy Saavedra lands her dream job with the popular website ¡Latino Now!, she can't wait to write hard-hitting pieces to combat all those stupid Latino stereotypes. While visions of Pulitzers dance in her head, her editor in chief is suddenly laid off, replaced by the infamous Dolores Villanueva O'Sullivan. Dolores has one mission: make ¡Latino Now! an internet phenomenon, no matter how many pandering puff pieces she has to pack onto its pages. Sandy doesn't see how she can keep this job without losing her soul, especially when she's sent to Middle-of-Nowhere Texas to investigate the dumbest legend her people ever created, the Chupacabra. She fears she's about to fail an assignment -- and lose her job -- until she meets Tío Jaime, a grandfatherly hermit who might be crazy, or might be the best thing that ever happened to Sandy's career.

Gwendolyn Zepeda was born in Houston, Texas in 1971 and attended the University of Texas at Austin. She began her writing career on the Web in 1997, with her long-running site gwendolynzepeda.com and as one of the founding writers of entertainment site Television Without Pity. Her first book was a short-story collection called To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him (Arte Público Press, 2004). Zepeda’s first children’s book, Growing Up with Tamales (Piñata Books) is a 2009 Charlotte Zolotow Award Highly Commended Title. Her first novel, Houston, We Have a Problema (Grand Central Publishing, 2009) won praise from Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist for its wit and upbeat story. Novelist Alisa Valdez Rodriguez calls Zepeda “a master wordsmith.” A two-time Houston Arts Alliance literary fellowship winner and award-winning poet, Zepeda regularly lectures at universities throughout Texas. Her upcoming books include another children’s book – Sunflowers (Piñata Books, 2009) – and a new novel from Grand Central Publishing called Lone Star Legend. Zepeda will also appear in Houston with Oscar Casares on May 3, as part of the Inprint Brown Reading Series for which Brazos is the proud bookseller.