PEN Presents: Reyna Grande and Héctor Tobar

This in-person event features former PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow Reyna Grande in conversation with Héctor Tobar discussing Grande’s new novel A Ballad of Love and Glory.

Set against the backdrop of a war between the U.S. and Mexico over the disputed Rio Grande boundary, the book follows the parallel stories of a gifted Mexican healer named Ximena Salomé and John Riley, an Irish immigrant. When Ximena and John meet, a dangerous attraction blooms between them. As the war intensifies, so does their passion. Swept up by forces with the power to change history, they fight not only for the fate of a nation but for their future together.

A copy of the book must be purchased along with a ticket to the event. Masks are required at all times. All attendees must be ready to show proof of full vaccination at check-in upon request.

This program will be co-presented with Vroman’s Bookstore. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Reyna Grande is an award-winning author, motivational speaker, and writing teacher. As a young girl, she crossed the US–Mexico border to join her family in Los Angeles, a harrowing journey chronicled in The Distance Between Us, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her other books include the novels A Ballad of Love and Glory, Across a Hundred Mountains, and Dancing with Butterflies, the memoirs The Distance Between Us: Young Readers Edition, and A Dream Called Home, and the anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings. She lives in Woodland, California, with her husband and two children. Visit ReynaGrande.com for more information.

Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and novelist. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestseller, Deep Down Dark, as well as The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. Héctor is also a contributing writer for the New York Times opinion pages and an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. He’s written for The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and other publications. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, L.A. Noir, Zyzzyva, and Slate. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family.