Author AMANDA RIZKALLA at Books Inc. Alameda

Amanda will be in conversation with Susanna Kwan.

About the book:

For readers of The House on Mango Street and We the Animals, this striking debut brings to life an unforgettable young narrator and the complicated, loving, cruel, and generous figures that make up her universe.

Sofia’s mother promises that soon she’ll have her own bedroom to decorate. Soon, too, she’ll be able to see her friends, go back to school, and eat the colorful, tempting cakes in the grocery store’s display case. For now, though, twelve-year-old Sofia lives with her mother and younger brother in their car. For now, Sofia’s days are a blur of freeways and strip malls as her mother searches for a safe place to park for the night. For now, Sofia tries to carve out a space and an identity for herself while grappling with her family’s disintegration.

This haunting and lyrical novel captures the fault lines of an existence marked by economic insecurity, exploring what it means to come of age during a moment of displacement. Beautifully rendered and emotionally charged, Amanda Rizkalla’s Hungered is an indelible ode to survival, memory, and the search for home in its many forms.

Amanda Rizkalla is a recent Steinbeck Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow. She has been a writer-in-residence at Ragdale, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, Mountain Words, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Monson Arts, and Blue Mountain Center. After graduating from Stanford University, she received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the Kemper Knapp Fellow. Her work has received a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, an Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship through Hedgebrook, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize.

Susanna Kwan is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Her debut novel, Awake in the Floating City, is the winner of the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Climate Fiction Prize. She teaches writing with The Dream Side.

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