Claudia Castro Luna with Anna Lapera: The Flowers Along The Way
About this Event
Join us at Bird in Hand to hear about Claudia Castro Luna’s The Flowers Along The Way (Northwestern University Press, September 15, 2026), a first-of-its-kind memoir in English about girlhood during the Salvadoran Civil War.
In The Flowers Along the Way, Castro Luna is a girl trying on a pair of high-heeled sandals hoping some of her neighbor’s glamour will rub off on her, while living with the understanding that an army convoy, a military jeep, or la Policia Nacional, might K*ll her.
Speaking in the language of flowers—mango, chirimoyas, jocotes, sprawling oregano, reedy pomegranate, and leggy chilipines—amidst state-sanctioned brutality, The Flowers Along the Way is a memoir both lush and taut.
We're thrilled that Anna Lapena, author of Mani Semilla Finds Her Quetzal Voice, will join Claudia Castro Luna in conversation. We hope you can join us!
Order THE FLOWERS ALONG THE WAY here!
Claudia Castro Luna is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019-2020), WA State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2018). She is the author of Green the World, One River, A Thousand Voices, Cipota Under the Moon, and Killing Marías. Castro Luna's memoir, The Flowers Along the Way is forthcoming fall 2026. Born in El Salvador, Castro Luna lives in English and Spanish, and writes and teaches in the Seattle Metro area. Watch Castro Luna's Poetry of Place talk at TEDxUofW and the PBS Newshour segment featuring her signature project, Seattle Poetic Grid. Follow @claudiacastroluna
Anna Lapera is a Guatemalan-American author and middle school teacher. Her debut novel, Mani Semilla Finds Her Quetzal Voice, is an International Latino Book Award winner, the 2025 International Literacy Association Honor Book, and was named one of the Best of 2024 by the School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, and others. Her second novel, Birdsong in the Long Night, a YA thriller about a burgeoning journalist in 1978 Guatemala, comes out in 2028.
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