Overview

Sirena Diamond is the child of Mexican immigrants who has grown up on the cusp of two cultures. When she isn't consoling her traumatized war veteran brother or entertaining her eccentric abuela with her pet duck, she is caught between a boyfriend trying to erase his past and a man whose past is an ever-changing story and her best friend without boundaries. Why Stars Burn,a novel-in-stories,introduces us to Sirena's world and the mysteries that lie just below the glittering surface of life in Los Angeles. Kathleen Alcal is the author ofThe Deepest Roots, a work of speculative nonfiction on sustainability and island living. Her work has received the Governor's Writers Award, the Western States Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, among others. A graduate of the MFA Program at the University of New Orleans and the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, Kathleen is editing an anthology on La Llorona, the Crying Woman of Mexican mythology, with Norma Elias Cant. Her novelsSpirits of the OrdinaryandThe Flower in the Skullhave recently been republished by Raven Chronicles Press.

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Reviews

""In a world of books that shout their intentions, Kathleen Alcalá's Why Stars Burn is a subtle, lyrical, resonant treat for anyone who likes stories about real people negotiating a life that confounds expectation."" --Sarah Pinsker, Nebula Award-winning author of A Song for a New Day ""Not to pick a fight with Leonard Cohen, but what if the cracks aren't where the light gets in, but where something wild and fabulous and terrible claws its way into our narratives? Despite her name, Sirena Diamond of Kathleen Alcalá's Why Stars Burn -- as close to a central protagonist as this novel-in-stories has -- is no self-sacrificing little mermaid, cut and polished into pledge and promise. Instead, she is a tlanchana, shapeshifting at will and at whim, sanding her raw and jagged surfaces against the places in Southern California with enough grit to matter. Alcalá is a writer of singular humanity, masterful in creating rich and complicated characters that pop in and out of each other's stories, and in and out of a landscape we would swear we already know ... until something startling and fearsome punches through. A new Alcalá book is always something to be celebrated, this one will leave you wanting more."" --Sabrina Vourvoulias, author of Ink ""Why Stars Burn immerses readers in an ambiguous wonderland where Sirena Diamond's mysterious lover *may* be an alien--or a Tuvan immigrant's first and only child--or neither--or both. Where she rides to her mother's funeral on a soberly decorated miniature train. Where prose clear to the point of clairvoyance lures light out of darkness and calls to brilliant life the ethereal arc of Sirena's story. Alcalá is sweetly adept at using her words to insert in our minds these wild and unexpected images and events, these stories born out of her matter-of-fact understanding of the everyday fantastic."" --Nisi Shawl, author of Everfair

Author Information

Kathleen Alcal is the author ofThe Deepest Roots, a work of speculative nonfiction on sustainability and island living. Her work has received the Governor's Writers Award, the Western States Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, among others. A graduate of the MFA Program at the University of New Orleans and the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, Kathleen is editing an anthology on La Llorona, the Crying Woman of Mexican mythology, with Norma Elias Cant. Her novelsSpirits of the OrdinaryandThe Flower in the Skullhave recently been republished by Raven Chronicles Press.

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