Alligator Tears with Edgar Gomez

PREORDER YOUR COPY OF ALLIGATOR TEARS HERE!

Tombolo Books welcomes award-winning author of High-Risk Homosexual, Edgar Gomez, to the bookstore to celebrate his new book, Alligator Tears!

A darkly comic memoir-in-essays, Alligator Tears explores the scam of the American Dream and doing whatever it takes to survive in the Sunshine State. Gomez will be in conversation with local author Tyler Gillespie!

More about Alligator Tears

In Florida, one of the first things you’re taught as a child is that if you’re ever chased by a wild alligator, the only way to save yourself is to run away in zigzags. It’s a lesson on survival that has guided much of Edgar Gomez’s life.

Alligator Tears is a fiercely defiant memoir-in-essays charting Gomez’s quest to claw his family out of poverty by any means necessary and exposing the archetype of the humble poor person for what it is: a scam that insists we remain quiet and servile while we wait for a prize that will always be out of reach. For those chasing the American Dream and those jaded by it, Gomez’s unforgettable story is a testament to finding love, purpose, and community on your own terms, smiling with all your fake teeth.

Edgar Gomez (he/they) is the author of High-Risk Homosexual, which received an American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Born and raised in Florida, Gomez has written for the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, LitHub, New York Magazine, and beyond. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Black Mountain Institute. Gomez lives in New York and Puerto Rico.

Tyler Gillespie is an award-winning writer and educator. He’s written for Rolling Stone, GQ, The Washington Post, The Nation, Salon, and Playboy. His poetry appears in anthologies such as In Absentia: Reflections on the Pandemic and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology while his humor writing can be found in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and LGBTQ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny. He’s the author of a nonfiction collection The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021) and two poetry books — the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023) and Florida Man: Poems, Revisited (Red Flag Poetry, 2018/Burrow Press, 2024). He posts poetry and risograph prints on Instagram (@tyler_gills).

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