Authors on Tap: Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Michael ZapataThursday Aug 18 2022 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Join us IN PERSON Thursday, August 18th at 7:00pm central to help celebrate Ingrid Rojas Contreras' new memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds. Ingrid will be in conversation with Exile MVP Michael Zapata!
About the book:
For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother's fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets" the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit "the secrets," Rojas Contreras' mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.
This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to "the secrets."
In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nono's remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often hilarious guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.
Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.
About the authors:
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was named a “Most Anticipated Book of the Year” by the TODAY Show, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Goodreads, and more, and is out from Doubleday in July 2022. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor’s choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California.
Michael Zapata is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine and the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, finalist for the 2020 Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction, and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He is on the core faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop out students. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.
About the event:
You can purchase their books through the respective links and Ingrid and Michael are happy to sign or personalize copies! If you can't make it to the event, signed copies will be available and we ship nationally!
Please note the following COVID protocols for those attending IN PERSON:
Attendees must present a physical copy or a photo of their COVID-19 vaccine card along with a valid photo ID (state, government, or school ID); or
Provide a time-stamped printout, photo, or email of a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of the event or a negative Rapid Antigen Test taken within 36 hours of the event, along with a valid photo ID (state, government, or school ID).
All persons must wear a mask for the duration of their time in the Fine Arts Building, regardless of vaccination status in accordance with our current COVID policies
Please email us at books@exileinbookville.com or phone us at (312)-753-3154 if you have any questions or concerns.
Click here to register for free!