“Daniel Silva, another one of my favorites, will be there. Doris Kearns Goodwin. Joan Didion (!!!). Alice McDermott. All in one place! Whoa. I still have to pinch myself to realize I’m on the list with the likes of them. Deep down, I still feel like that dreamy girl with the HUGE PERM, sitting outside the bandroom at Del Norte High School, scribbling poems and songs into a spiral-bound notebook while a storm rolled in over the mountains. I truly feel like not a thing has changed. Weird, no?”
— Albuquerque’s very own Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez celebrating her invitation to the National Book Festival in Washington this September.
No, not weird at all.