Sandra Cisneros, author "The House on Mango Street," "Puro Amor"

Air Dates: July 27-29, 2019

THIS WEEK - A *New* Interview: SANDRA CISNEROS, Author

BOOKS:“Puro Amor” – Latest Work-- “The House on Mango Street” – Celebrating 30 Years in Publication --6 Million Copies Sold, Translated Into 20 Languages –

AWARDS:2019 PEN/Nabokov Award in International LiteratureNational Medal of the ArtsFord Foundation Art of Change GrantNational Endowment for the Arts Fellowships

July 24, 2019 -- This week, in a NEW interview, REPORT FROM SANTA FE speaks with internationally best-selling author Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros celebrates the 30th anniversary of her iconic novel "The House on Mango Street," which now has sold six million copies and is available in twenty languages.

Cisneros celebrates her latest work,"Puro Amor," a bilingual story based on a vignette from the lives of Frida Kahlo and Diego River, full of original illustrations by the author herself.

Sandra Cisneros also welcomes the paperback edition of her memoir,"A House of My Own," a richly illustrated compilation of true stories and nonfiction pieces that, taken together, form a jigsaw autobiography — an intimate album of a beloved literary legend.

“Home” is a theme throughout Cisneros’ work, usually in the form of clever aphorisms ("A house for me is a space to reinvent oneself, like putting on a new dress."). But eventually, home becomes less associated with the house on Mango Street, or the “home” in her memoir “A House of My Own,” particularly when she applies it as a metaphor to other developments in her life, for example her literary activism: "We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire, and the people we love are burning." She notes her quest for a home is now resolved, “I feel at this age at home in myself.”

Sandra Cisneros writes short stories, novels, poetry, memoir, and creates drawings. She acknowledges she was an artist before she was a writer and details some of the new creative ventures she is embarking upon like a project with text and textiles, a suite of songs based on “The House on Mango Street,” and the possibility of writing the libretto for a much anticipated opera based on “Mango Street.”

Additional books by Cisneros include: “A House of My Own: Stories of My Life,” “Woman Hollering Creek,” “Carmelo,” Have You Seen Marie?”

AWARDS Won / Fellowships:2019 PEN/Nabokov Award in International LiteratureNational Medal of the Arts,awarded by Pres. Obama  Ford Foundation Art of Change GrantNational Endowment for the Arts FellowshipsLannan Literary AwardThe American Book AwardMacArthur FellowshipTexas Medal of the Arts

PRESS QUOTES:Boston Globe -- “Cisneros is the impassioned bard of the Mexican border.”

New York Times Review of Books -- “Cisneros draws on her rich Latina heritage…and seduces with precise, spare prose, creating unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.”