Gerardo Sámano Córdova w/ Anne de Marcken, MONSTRILIO

Gerardo Sámano Córdova visits the store to discuss his debut novel, Monstrilio, about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes. He is joined in conversation by Anne de Marcken, author of It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over.

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses―though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care―threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.

A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.

Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City living in Brooklyn. He is the author of Monstrilio, winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize, finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a Book of the Year by NPR, Elle, Goodreads and others. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan and is the current Writer in Residence at Fordham University. Gerardo has also been known to draw little creatures.

Anne de Marcken is a queer interdisciplinary artist and writer living on unceded land of the Coast Salish people in Olympia, WA, in the United States. She is the founding editor and publisher of the 3rd Thing.

Host or Publisher Elliott Bay Book Company