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    Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
    Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
    Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
    Ebook183 pages2 hours

    Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border

    By Octavio Solis

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    Octavio: Selling and Marketing Points

     

    Accessible writing that is a mix of memoir and flash fiction.   Stories quickly lead readers to dramatic, emotional moments, and each vignette builds upon the next.

     

    Similar to the artistic trajectory of Sam Shepard, Octavio is well-known for his theater work and will now find a home in the literary world with this collection.

     

    Stories describe life on the border, growing up between Texas (El Paso) and Mexico

     

    Endorsements expected from Dagoberto Gilb, Myriam Gurba, Greg Sarris and Ana Castillo.

    Just in from Julia Alvarez:

    "Reminiscent of THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET the way way the small vignettes build a narrative and lyrical arc.

    Octavio Solis does with words and imagery, lyricism and details, humor and heartbreak what the master craftsmen & women of the traditional retablos do with wood and paint, achieving the same results: these short luminous retablos are magical and enticing. Unpretentiously and with an unerring accuracy of tone and rhythm, Solis slowly builds what amounts to a storybook cathedral. We inhabit a border world rich in characters, lush with details, playful and poignant, a border that refutes the stereotypes and divisions smaller minds create. Solis reminds us that sometimes the most profound truths are best told with crafted fictions—and he is a master at it. His is a large, capacious, and inclusive imagination. Just as the traditional retablos are objects of beauty ultimately meant as devotional pieces, Solis’s Retablos will make devotees of his readers." --Julia Alvarez is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s books, including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies. She received a National Medal for the Arts from President Obama in 2014,

    Just in from Gary Soto:

    "The murky flow of the Rio Grande River, the border patrol we call la migra, demons, a petty crime of stolen candy, street urchins, family squabbles, eccentric neighbors, and bike rides in which dust envelops a skinny kid named Octavio Solis. When he stops peddling years later, he’ll spank the dust from his clothes, but not all of it. Some of it clings to his very soul, and will cling to us, the reader, in this tender and perceptive memoir. This is American and Mexican literature a stone’s throw from the always hustling El Paso border.”—Gary Soto, author of The Elements of San Joaquin        

     

    Praise for his theater work has appeared on NPR, in the LA Times, the NY Times, the Rumpus, and elsewhere.

     

    Was an advisor of the film COCO.

     

    Actively pursuing excerpts in Bomb, Harper’s, Virginia Quarterly Review, Zoetrope Magazine and the Paris Review

    Bay Area/Los Angeles/Ashland Oregon hosting openings of plays by Octavio Solis:

    On June 16, Solis' adaptation of Don Quixote, entitled "Quixote Nuevo," opens at CalShakes (aka The California Shakespeare Theatre) in Orinda under the direction of KJ Sanchez.

    On August 16, Solis' new play "Hole In The Sky" premieres at the Circle X Theatre Company in Siskiyou County, then plays in Los Angeles from September 16-October 16. Under the direction of Kate Jopson.

    In early March 2019, his other new play "Mother Road" receives its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon under the direction of Bill Rauch.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCity Lights Publishers
    Release dateOct 23, 2018
    ISBN9780872867888
    Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
    Author

    Octavio Solis

    Author of over 20 plays, Octavio Solis is considered one of the most prominent Latino playwrights in America. With works that both draw on and transcend the Mexican-American experience, he examines the darkness, magic and humor of humanity with brutal honesty and intensity, crossing cultural and aesthetic boundaries. His works, which include Alicia’s Miracle, Se Llama Cristina, John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, Ghosts of the River, Quixote, Lydia, June in a Box, Lethe, Marfa Lights, Gibraltar, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, The 7 Visions of Encarnación, Bethlehem, Dreamlandia, El Otro, Man of the Flesh, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, and La Posada Mágica have been mounted at the California Shakespeare Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and other venues nationwide. Among his many awards and grants, Solis has received an NEA Playwriting Fellowship, the Kennedy Center’s Roger L. Stevens award, the TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the National Latino Playwriting Award, and the PEN Center USA Award for Drama.  His fiction has been published in the Chicago Quarterly Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Eleven Eleven, the Louisville Review, Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, Arroyo Literary Review and Zyzzyva.

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    • 5/5
      Not a misfire in this beautiful collection of essays chronicling growing up in El Paso. Several of these are as fine as any short story you'll ever read.

    Book preview

    Retablos - Octavio Solis

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