Three authors share their inspirations and strategies when confronting hard truths, both personal and historical, in their writing.

Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home, and the story collection How Winter Began, as well as the memoir The Truth Book and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award. She is also editor of the anthology Family Trouble and served as the guest judge of CRAFT‘s first Creative Nonfiction Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Senses of Cinema, Salon, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Brevity, Afro-Hispanic Review,and elsewhere. A former Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University, she is currently the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Yxta Maya Murray is a novelist, art critic, playwright, and law professor. The author of nine books, her most recent are the forthcoming story collection, The World Doesn’t Work That Way, but It Could (University of Nevada Press, 2020), and the novel, Art Is Everything (TriQuarterly Press, 2021). She has won a Whiting Award, an Art Writer's Grant, and has been named a fellow at the Huntington Library for her work on radionuclide contamination in Simi Valley, California.

Reyna Grande is the author of the bestselling memoir, The Distance Between Us, and the much-anticipated sequel, A Dream Called Home. Her other works include the novels, Across a Hundred Mountains, Dancing with Butterflies, and The Distance Between Us young readers edition. Her books have been adopted as the common read selection by schools, colleges, and cities across the country. She has two forthcoming books in 2022: A Ballad of Love and Glory, a novel set during the Mexican-American War, and an anthology by and about undocumented Americans called Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival and New Beginnings. Reyna has received an American Book Award, the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award, and the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature. Writing about immigration, family separation, language trauma, the price of the American Dream, and her writing journey, Reyna’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, CNN, The Lily at The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, among others. In March 2020, she was a guest in Oprah’s Book Club. She has taught at the Macondo Writers Workshop, Bread Loaf, and VONA.

Joy Castro, © Shae Sackman; Yxta Maya Murray, © Andrew Brown; Reyna Grande, © Ara Arbabzadeh

Writing Through Trauma