Désirée Zamorano, author and educator, joins BookSwell Intersections host Cody Sisco to discuss Dispossessed, her powerful historical novel about mass deportations of Mexican Americans in 1930s Los Angeles. They explore the novel’s themes of invisibility and injustice, the inspiration behind its good-man protagonist, and the urgent parallels between past and present struggles for equity and representation.
Désirée Zamorano is the author of the highly acclaimed literary novel, The Amado Women. An award-winning and Pushcart prize nominee, her work is often an exploration of issues of invisibility, injustice or inequity. Her writing appears in Alta, Catapult, and The Kenyon Review. Her novel Dispossessed is out from Rize.
Désirée’s Book Recommendations
What I’m Currently Reading
A Book That Changed My Life
Books That Shaped My Storytelling
Summer of Love for Immigrant, Refugee, and Diaspora Stories
Jase Peeples, award-winning journalist and author of Twirl and Square Zair Pair, joins host Cody Sisco in conversation about his debut YA MM romance novel in the competitive world of Color Guard. They discuss Jase’s inspirations competing in and coaching the sport, writing about young love, San Francisco as a significant setting, and the power of representation in fiction for queer youth and families.
Jase Peeples is an award-winning journalist, author, and storyteller. He is the former entertainment editor of The Advocate and currently works as a features and global news editor at RVO Health. His debut novel, TWIRL (Evernight Teen), and his first children’s book, Square Zair Pair, are available worldwide.
His writing has been featured in a variety of outlets including Healthline, Healthgrades, Out, Queerty, and WGI Focus Magazine. In 2014, he was named “Journalist of the Year” by the L.A. Press Club at the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards, recognized for his “original angles and points of view” that cast “new light on many beaten tracks of entertainment journalism.”
Jase earned his BFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and calls San Francisco home.
Joe McClean, screenwriter, director, and author of Sins of Survivors, joins host Cody Sisco in conversation about his debut novel rooted in the history of Black Bottom, Detroit. They discuss the Great Migration, the Carter brothers’ struggle to build an empire and leave their criminal pasts behind, the legacy of segregation and redlining, and adapting from screenwriting to prose. Joe shares how his research uncovered hidden histories, why he portrays the era’s violence unflinchingly, and what to expect in the upcoming sequel set during Detroit’s 1943 race riots.
Joe McCleanis a screenwriter and director whose 2013 breakout indie feature, Life Tracker, screened at dozens of film festivals and sci-fi conventions before streaming on demand in 100 million homes through cable providers. His follow-up, the indie-darling The Drama Club, premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 2017 before finding a home on Tubi. His most recent endeavor, Viral, written and produced by McClean, was directed by and stars Blair Underwood.
Blair Underwood is a two-time Golden Globe and Tony nominee, as well as an Emmy, Grammy, Peabody and eight-time NAACP Image Award-winning actor, director, and producer. He made his acting debut in the 1985 musical film Krush Groove, and, from 1987 to 1994, starred as attorney Jonathan Rollins in the NBC legal drama series L.A. Law. Underwood has starred in numerous film, television, and stage productions, including Longlegs, Three Women, Deep Impact, Sex in the City, Set It Off, Madea’s Family Reunion, Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker and many more. Underwood received his first Tony Award nomination as Best Lead Actor in a Play after starring in the 2020 Broadway revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Soldier’s Play.
Tisha Reichle-Aguilera, poet, educator, and author of the YA novel Breaking Pattern, joins Cody Sisco in conversation about rodeo sports, growing up in Southern California, difficult family relationships, and challenging norms and expectations around gender roles and socio-economic status.
Chicana feminist and former rodeo queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and is a PhD candidate at USC. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and featured in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her YA novel, Breaking Pattern, was published by Inlandia Books. She’s a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit.
We believe in the human right to life, liberty, and security. We believe in the right to asylum. We believe in freedom from arbitrary detention, torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment. We believe in access to justice.
At a time when political leaders in the United States are negating human rights and leading us into darkness, we believe in the power of stories to create hope, to heal, and to chart paths toward better futures for anyone seeking life, liberty, and security by crossing borders.
We are gathering book recommendations from authors and advocates who want to share stories of migration and diaspora. Many thanks to Tisha Reichle-Aguilera for bringing the titles listed below to our attention.
Lynne Thompson, Fourth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, joins host Cody Sisco in conversation about her most recent collection of poetry, Blue on a Blue Palette. They discuss taking inspiration from the world, how women are both elevated and denigrated, palm trees, Black lives, poetic forms, and being a good poetry citizen. And Lynne reads three of her poems for us.
Lynne Thompson was the 4th Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles. The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, her poetry collections include Beg No Pardon (2007), winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (2013), from What Books Press; and Fretwork (2019), winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Thompson’s honors include the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award (poetry) and the Stephen Dunn Prize for Poetry as well as fellowships from the City of Los Angeles, Vermont Studio Center, and the Summer Literary Series in Kenya. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Poem-A-Day (Academy of American Poets), New England Review, Colorado Review, Pleiades, Ecotone, and Best American Poetry, to name a few.
A lawyer by training, Thompson sits on the boards of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Cave Canem and is the Chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College, her alma mater. She facilitates private workshops, most recently for Beyond Baroque, Poetry By the Sea Conference, Moorpark College Writers Festival, and Central Coast Writers’ Conference. Thompson is a native of Los Angeles, California, where she resides.
