I’m an author, visual artist, and film producer. I’m originally from Mexico but studied fine art in London at Central St Martins School of art with a scholarship. I’ve had a wild career of writing, packaging, developing, and publishing books for more than a decade. You can see some of my visual art in galleries, museums, and my Instagram @leopoldoleopoldo or in my most recent illustrated novel Monarca. My forthcoming novel, Piñata, is a supernatural possession story driven by the real horrors of colonialism in my native Mexico. I wrote it as an outlet for a simultaneous love and rage at the world, history, my country, and current events.
A Mexican American architect brings her two daughters with her on a job renovating an old mission in Tulancingo, Mexico, hoping to show them where their family is from and give them the chance to connect with their heritage. After an accident at the work site reveals forgotten Nahua artifacts it becomes quickly apparent that the long heritage of Mexico itself is more alive than it may seem. The old gods of the Nahua, paved over by Catholic colonization, make their way into the world of the present. Lamenting that their language, their power, and their songs have been forgotten.
I love this work by Bulgakov for its wild imagination and his mastery in utilizing magical realism as a means of discussing the politics of his time.
It’s a novel that really encapsulates a kind of nuance against duality that inspires me, a reminder that the things we consider black and white—good and evil, bravery and cowardice, right and wrong, love and lust—exist only within one another.
My favorite interpretation of Bulgakov’s reasons for writing it is that it was in response to the militant atheism of his time, not as a religious screed, but to bite back against iconoclastically erasing an important history, even if it’s not a good one.
And then inside of the book is one of the greatest love stories ever… I fell for that witch and I hope anyone that reads it can experience the emotions it gave me.
'Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest' Independent
Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, The Master and Margarita became an overnight literary phenomenon when it was finally published it, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere. Bulgakov's carnivalesque satire of Soviet life describes how the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow one Spring afternoon. Brimming with magic and incident, it is full of imaginary, historical, terrifying and wonderful characters, from witches, poets and Biblical tyrants to the beautiful, courageous Margarita, who will…
It may be odd of me to include a book of academic lectures in a list like this, but I think Calvino’s Six Memos are accessible and valuable to anyone who appreciates literature and its “family tree.”
Its forward-thinking nature is sourced from Calvino’s deep knowledge and love for literature’s history and growth over time.
He pulls on so many different threads throughout and I love it as a reminder, a memo, from a genius like Calvino that the fabric of future great works are woven from those long threads stretching back to great works of the past.
It showed me in very simple concepts in literature, such as Lightness, Exactitude, Quickness, Visibility, and Multiplicity, echoed with me also in visual art. It’s one of those books I keep re-reading…
Italo Calvino's brilliant reflection on what makes great literature, from the classics to more contemporary works, punctuated with personal details about Calvino's own writing processes.
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued, and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature, but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself.
It’s an all-too-common crime of a history written by societies victors that brilliant women like Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz are doomed after living a life enriching this world’s literature and thought.
It was rage at this kind of historical injustice which inspired my writing of my book.
Sor Juana’s great poem "First Dream" also inspired me not only in my first novel, but in many of the visual art I did in my 20’s. We even called my daughter Inés, partially in homage to her.
Octavio Paz’s masterpiece that won him the Nobel Prize of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is an incredible time travelling journey. It’s so wonderful that sometimes you think you are reading a memoir and go deep inside her poetry, science, love life, and dreams.
It is biography, history, literary criticism, and an expose against the Vatican’s minions who were colonizing and imposing their madness all over the world.
As Faulkner is over-quoted as writing in Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This is Paz’s requiem for a nun telling us the same.
Mexico's leading poet, essayist, and cultural critic writes of a Mexican poet of another time and another world, the world of seventeenth-century New Spain. His subject is Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the most striking figure in all of Spanish-American colonial literature and one of the great poets of her age.
Her life reads like a novel. A spirited and precocious girl, one of six illegitimate children, is sent to live with relatives in the capital city. She becomes known for her beauty, wit, and amazing erudition, and is taken into the court as the Vicereine's protegee. For five…
It covers so many themes I love and redefined a Vampire tale… It danced around gender, social horror, and coming of age; but something I find very intriguing about this book’s world is its past, or lack thereof.
The town it takes place in is described as missing a past early on, which made such a stark impact on me considering it is a book that deconstructs such a historied character: the vampire.
The vampire is taken into such new contexts, not a suave, rich, handsome aristocratic type, but a young kid living on the outskirts of modern society. It takes an old convention used to talk about the problems of its day into a modern setting, literally mutilating Eli to discuss contemporary societal horror.
It was intimate and glorious, making you feel the hunger and literally growing incredible empathy for a monster. It made us all guardians of Eli.
When I read it, I was going to become a father and it just transported me into pure bliss. I really love how Lindqvist molded the horror genre like clay.
John Ajvide Lindqvist’s international bestseller Let the Right One In is “a brilliant take on the vampire myth, and a roaring good story” (New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong), the basis for the multi-film festival award-winning Swedish film, the U.S. adaptation Let Me In directed by Matt Reeves (The Batman), and the Showtime TV series.
It is autumn 1981 when inconceivable horror comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenager is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at…
What better metaphor for the past returning than the bodies we bury coming back to us? I see in King’sPet Sematary exactly this metaphor of how we see “the good ole days,” the imagined past.
When we attempt to resurrect that which has found its fateful or natural end, what we are confronted with is the grotesque—either its distorted form from our memory or a painful vision of its reality.
I also love it for its touch of Native American folklore, or rather its peeking into North American folklores views and fictions of Native American folklore. This convention in itself is another place to ask this question about the imagined past.
I’ve always said that even though I love my adoptive country and my own children were born in NYC, for this country to move forward it needs to deal with many of the horrors of its origins and one of the biggest issues is the Native American past and the horrors it still incurs on them.
King is a master of the genre and I needed to mention him here because of his impact on all of us.
Now a major motion picture! Stephen King’s #1 New York Times bestseller is a “wild, powerful, disturbing” (The Washington Post Book World) classic about evil that exists far beyond the grave—among King’s most iconic and frightening novels.
When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow’s tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed’s beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing…as is evidenced by the…
I've been passionate about music for almost my entire life. Jazz music in particular speaks to me but not just jazz. I love music, full stop. I really discovered jazz when I attended a jazz club workshop in London and there, I had to join in or leave. I chose to join in and since then I have never looked back. I was introduced to more jazz musicians and now write about music for three major columns as well as Readers’ Digest. My Women In Jazz book won several awards. I have been International Editor for the Jazz Journalist Association and had my work commissioned by the Library of Congress.
With input from over 100 musicians, the book discusses what exactly jazz is, and how you know you are listening to it. Do we truly know when and how jazz first originated? Who was the first jazz musician? How does jazz link to other genres? What about women in jazz? And writers and journalists? Do reviews make any difference?
This book is a deep dive into jazz's history, impact, and future. It discusses jazz's social, cultural, and political influence and reveals areas where jazz has had an impact we may not even realize.Its influences on hip hop, the connection to…
This book is very different from other, more general jazz books. It is packed with information, advice, well researched and includes experiences from jazz musicians who gleefully add their rich voices to Sammy's in-depth research. All genres, from hard bop to be-bop, vocal jazz, must instrumental, free jazz, and everything between is covered in one way or another and given Sammy's forensic eye. There is social commentary and discussions of careers in jazz music. The musical background of those in the book is rich and diverse. Critics comment: "This new book by Sammy Stein is a highly individual take on…
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