The University of Arizona Press
When: 4 p.m., Monday, March 20, 2023
Where: University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd., TCH 103, Orlando, Florida
Writers in the Sun, the English Department, and UCF Alumni welcome English alumnus Juan Martinez for a reading and book signing.
About the book:
After his parents are killed in a horrific roadside execution, Alvaro flees his home in Colombia and finds work as a line cook at the seedy hotel. Together with his sister, Carmen, he begins to make a new life in the desert, earning a promotion to management along with an irresistible offer to stay at the hotel rent-free. But as beloved photographs go missing, cockroaches seep from the walls, and grotesque strangers wander the corridors, the promise of the Alicia decays into nightmare. Alvaro discovers that the hotel is a small appendage of an enormous creature that feeds on guests and their secrets, one that will eventually bring him face-to-face with the memories he most wants to outrun.
About the author:
Juan Martinez is the author of Best Worst American, a story collection published by Small Beer Press and the winner of the Neukom Institute Award for Debut Speculative Fiction. He lives near Chicago and is an associate professor at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including McSweeney’s, Huizache, Ecotone, Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, NPR’s Selected Shorts, Mississippi Review, NIGHTMARE, and elsewhere.
