An Afternoon with Esmeralda Santiago, Author of Las Madres, a Hispanic Heritage Month Program

Meet award-winning author Esmeralda Santiago, who will discuss her book Las Madres, a powerful novel about family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that moves between Puerto Rico and the Bronx, revealing the lives and loves of five women and the secret that binds them. Summer Lopez, Chief Program Officer of Free Expression Programs at PEN America, will moderate the conversation. 

This event is in collaboration with PEN America.

Book sale and signing by Elm Street Books.

Registration required.

Esmeralda Santiago is the author of the novel Conquistadora and the memoirs When I was Puerto Rican and Almost A Woman, which was adapted into a Peabody Award–winning movie for PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she lives with her husband, documentary filmmaker Frank Cantor, in New York, and Port Clyde, Maine.

Summer Lopez joined PEN America in 2017 and now serves as the Chief Program Officer of Free Expression Programs. She previously worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for eight years, and was most recently posted to Zimbabwe, where she served as the deputy director of the Office of Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance at the USAID Mission in Harare.