Guadalupe Garcia McCall is an author, poet, and educator who has been noted as a “leading voice in Chicana and Latina children’s and young adult literature.” She received her B.A. in Theatre and English from Sul Ross State University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. She is a recipient of the 2012 Pura Belpré Medal and currently teaches young writers in the MFA program at Antioch University. In this episode, in collaboration with Bloomsday intern Elena Welsh, a lover and scholar of YA, we talk about McCall’s mission to reach young people who did not see themselves in literature growing up and to represent the Hispanic community’s “mamas, tios, and tias.” McCall also discusses the differences between publishing with the Big Five and independent publishers and how each choice affects growth and the longevity of her books. Further, McCall emphasizes her role and experience as an educator in her creative and publication processes, and how essential her interaction with educators and librarians in schools is to her work. McCall stresses the care it takes to find the right translator for her work, to ensure that the Spanish language “sounds true” to her Hispanic readers. And finally, excitingly, McCall tells all about her most recent work, a collaboration with David Bowles’, Secret of the Moon Conch (Bloomsbury, 2023). Tune in to here more about the inspiration behind and the process by which she wrote this time-traveling love story. P.S. We talk about a haunted house Garcia McCall and Bowles visited to inspire the sense of place in The Secret of the Moon Conch. Who doesn’t love a good ghost story?

Published Date: November 23, 2023

Transcription

Phuc Luu:

This has been a live recording of the Effing Shakespeare Podcast by Bloom State Literary at the 2023 AWP conference and book fair. We're thankful to be the official podcast for AWP for third year and have invited a [inaudible 00:00:16] guest that you don't want to miss out on. As always, please subscribe, rate, and review so we can continue to bring you interviews of amazing writers sharing about their amazing work. Enjoy.

Kate Martin Williams:

Welcome back to Live at AWP with Blooms Day Literary. We have our final guest of the weekend, Guadalupe Garcia McCall. We are so excited to get to speak with her. She's an author, poet, and educator. Holds a BA in theater and English from Sul Ross State University and a master of fine Arts and Creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. McCall currently teaches writing for young people in the MFA program at Antioch. Her first novel Under The Mesquite debuted in 2011 and received the prestigious Pura Belpré Medal for Narrative in 2012. She's written several more young adult novels, including the beloved Summer of the Mariposas published by [inaudible 00:01:19] books. And her new book is a collaboration with David Bowles called Secret of the Moon Conch out this June with Bloomsbury. Can't wait to talk about that. And she has been called a leading voice in Chicana and Latina children's and young adult literature. We could not be more excited to talk with you today. Thank you for being here.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Thank you so much for having me.

Kate Martin Williams:

I also want to introduce just for our conversation today, Elena Welsh, they are a lover of YA, has read widely within the genre, but is also a scholar of YA. Their thesis at Southwestern University is entitled Magic for Misfits... I'll say that again. Magic for Misfits, A theoretical guide on the import of Young Adult Fantasy. And they're here today to host our next guest and I just wanted you to be able to be in on that conversation with Guadalupe and let's get to it. Thank you so much for being here.

Elena Welsh:

So excited for this opportunity.

Kate Martin Williams:

I very much want our Blooms Day literary intern, Elena Welsh, to be in conversation with you today. Elena Welsh is a lover of YA. They read widely within the genre, but what Elena is also a scholar of YA. Their thesis at Southwestern University is entitled Magic for Misfits, A Theoretical Guide on the Import of Young Adult Fantasy. And they've been here to host today our next guest. So we're so thankful that you're here too.

Elena Welsh:

I'm thankful to be here also.

Kate Martin Williams:

Yeah, so without further ado,

Elena Welsh:

Awesome. Okay. So as Kate just said, I have an incredible soft spot for YA literature and then honestly, having just been a teenager myself, I'm 21 now. It's just been such a wonderful place of love and acceptance and knowledge for me and for people that I know. And even as an adult, I still avidly read YA. My first question had to do with kind of the uplifting stuff about the genre and specifically what excites you the most about writing YA lit?

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

What excites me the most? I think it's reaching young people like myself who did not see themselves in the literature and I'm writing stories for them about them and I'm speaking mostly to the Hispanic community, the marginalized groups that have not necessarily seen their story, their juanitas, their mamas, their [foreign language 00:03:50], their cousins, and the way we live on the border. So I'm trying to show them that these are their stories and they matter. And so that's exciting for me.

Elena Welsh:

For sure. It's so beautiful. I freaking love how much YA authors have really made so much progress and so much effort and putting these stories out into the world that haven't been in the world before, at least not in books. Because the stories are there, people aren't telling them. So it's beautiful and fantastic. So you've published pretty widely, you have several books. I was scrolling through your website before talking with you because-

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Thank you.

Elena Welsh:

... I wanted to see... Of course, probably going to make a purchase after this just heads up. And we'd love to talk a bit about your experience publishing with two books in particular, but also what is it like to publish through an indie house versus one of the big four publishing houses in United States?

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Well, for me, I know that people talk about this concept of advances and so of course you're going to get a smaller advance in a smaller house. However, they're going to keep your book longer, they're going to keep it for as long as you want and they want. And so you're going to earn the advance faster, but also you're going to start seeing that book grow and it has a wider audience because it's about eventuality. It's not here today, gone tomorrow, flash in the pan. It's we are committed. Lee & Low says, "We are committed to you as an author, to your career and also to your book." The very special books that get published by them. And so for me, that is the reason why I am so committed to Lee & Low as well. I mean, I publish with Bloomsbury and Harper Collins as well, but I am committed to staying with them and doing work with them as well.

Elena Welsh:

That's something that we really love about being an independent publisher and being a smaller publisher is just the commitment and the relationships that we build with our authors. And it's so wonderful seeing that just translated and other publishers and yeah.

Kate Martin Williams:

The lifespan of a book is longer. So that's how we see something like Summer of the Mariposas, where it's in schools where it's taught and it just lives for a long time in that way.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Right. And it's reaching the children. It's just more and more children are getting to enjoy this book, this odyssey that I wrote for them, that if it had been another kind of publisher and they might not have that. It might have disappeared.

Elena Welsh:

Kind of branching off of that, you keep mentioning children, obviously it's YA lit. You have taught in San Antonio K through 12 schools for quite a while and were with graduate level students in Oregon. So firsthand how important it's for students to see themselves in the stories that they read and the stories that are taught in the classroom. What role does your relationship with educators play for you and your publisher when you get to the part in the book journey when you're really trying to get it into the hands of readers?

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

I think it's really fun to see teachers get excited about books. And so I love going to conferences like NCTE. I love going to places where teachers and librarians are there because really they're in the front of the mind. They're right there with the students and so they know what is needed. And so as an educator, I remember what was needed when I was in my middle school years because I taught 24 years in middle school and five years in high school. And now-

Kate Martin Williams:

That is a special person.

Elena Welsh:

100%.

Kate Martin Williams:

Especially the middle school teacher. I have a middle schooler right now, so I know what kind of special love it takes to be a middle school teacher.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

It just takes a lot of energy and excitement and love. Love for life and their stories and what they're going through, the angst as well as the celebrations. You got to be there for all of it.

Elena Welsh:

For sure.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

And so that's what I love writing. When I write, I actually still hear their little voices and I still hear their narratives when they would come in and tell me their stories or what was going on in their lives. And so I still hear their voices and that's what I want to celebrate in my books.

Elena Welsh:

Have you had any students come up to you saying that they've read something that you've written and being like, "I really saw myself in this book." Or something like that.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Oh, the greatest experience. The greatest experience. The first time I got to go to Eagle Pass, my sister was a instructional coordinator for this elementary and they read under the Mesquite and Summer of the Mariposas and I went in and they were so excited because it was in their town. These stories were in their town and they kept saying, "We looked for your house. It has to have a mesquite, it has to be close to San Luis Elementary, and we were looking for your house and we found it. We think we found it." So they were telling me where they thought it was, and I was like, "No, that's not it." "Tell us where it is." And I was like, "No, it's so much fun to watch you all look for it."

Elena Welsh:

It's like a scavenger hunt. It's awesome.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Yes, yes. And it was really interesting that they were picking up clues from the narrative.

Kate Martin Williams:

Oh, can I ask a question?

Elena Welsh:

Yeah, go ahead.

Kate Martin Williams:

I wanted to ask about the translation that happened for Summer of the Mariposas. You wanted to make sure that it wasn't just any Spanish translator who was working with you on that book and you wanted to make sure it had a voice that rang true. Tell me about that journey, finding the right translator and how important that is, especially when we're talking about writing this for the audience for whom you're writing.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

So I live on the border, I wrote this book for students in South Texas and on the borderlands all the way to California. And I wanted the Spanish to sound true to them. I didn't want academic Spanish because academic Spanish sounds-

Kate Martin Williams:

Hold on Guadalupe, not all Spanish is the same. Is that what you're telling me?

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Not all Spanish is same. Even Spanish in other states sounds different. But right there in Texas on the border are Tex-Mex. It's not just food, it's also culture. It's also language. And so somebody might say [foreign language 00:10:27]. Well, yes, they might say that, but in Texas we say, "[foreign language 00:10:32]" because we've taken car and we've made it into a Spanish word. And so I wanted that. And though it might not be academic, it is very much the way we speak and when we talk, we throw in both languages and we mix them together. So a sentence might start in one language and keep going in another, but the wording is really important. I'll never forget when somebody said something about the refrigerator and I was like, "What is that? I don't know that word." And it was an academic Spanish for it. It's like European.

Kate Martin Williams:

Yes. Oh my gosh.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. We call it, "[foreign language 00:11:11]" so you got to use one of those two. So it was really important for me. And then when they suggested David Bowles, I'm all in because one, I know David and we're friends, we're actually co-writing books now, but it was-

Kate Martin Williams:

Which I want to talk about too. So that's my next question, but keep going.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

We'll get into that. But it was about the fact that he felt the same way as I did, that it was really important to capture the language in the way it is spoken because I don't want somebody in Eagle past to say, "Well, that was weird."

Kate Martin Williams:

Yeah, this author doesn't really know me.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Yeah, that's not the way we talk. I want them to say, "Oh my God, this is absolutely who we are." Because that's the whole point of writing the books.

Elena Welsh:

For sure.

Kate Martin Williams:

And that was the essay I read David Bull's essay where he defends the way that he translated the book.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Oh, because he got some criticism.

Kate Martin Williams:

Some criticisms, yeah.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

And I was like-

Kate Martin Williams:

No sir.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

I'm sorry. You were wrong. In this instance, you were wrong. It was absolutely the right way to translate this.

Elena Welsh:

You want an academic Spanish career textbook.

Kate Martin Williams:

Or a different book. That was a different book. Yeah. Okay. So tell us about your collaboration with David Bowles and your most recent book. I want to hear all about it.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Okay. So I was in Oregon, I was teaching and I had just watched The Lake house and with Sandra Bullock, and I was looking at it and the credits were rolling and I thought, "That is so cool that somebody can communicate with somebody else in the past and then save their lives. And not only that, they fall in love." And I was like, oh my God. And I said it out loud, "Why hasn't anybody done something like this for YA?" So my husband's in the kitchen, not even 20 feet away and making a sandwich. And he says, well, I don't know if we had a YA author in the room, we could ask her.

Kate Martin Williams:

If only there were a way?

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

And I'm sitting there going, "Challenge." This is the challenge. So seriously, immediately the story comes to me. She is an immigrant who has just lost her grandmother, the only person she has in her life. And now this guy who's a low level criminal gangster has decided that she's the one and he's going to take possession of her. So she's like, "No, I'm not. I don't belong to anyone." And so she flees to the United States with this gang behind her trying to bring her back. And at the same time she has to go to the United States to find her father because he is her family and her last family member. And I thought and there's a magical artifact and that it's going to communicate her. And then I thought, "And who is he? He is a warrior in Penotitlan during the siege, and he is fleeing from the Spanish imperialists. He is literally running for his life from [foreign language 00:14:23] and all of-"

Kate Martin Williams:

I have goosebumps.

Elena Welsh:

That's awesome.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

And they can communicate and eventually they will help each other as they both run for their lives to a safe place. They will find it not only the safe place, but they will find love. And I was like, "Oh, that's beautiful." Because I could see the movie in my head. Because that's how I write. I see movies in my head. And so there I was, and then I thought, "Wait a minute. I don't know anything about the fall of Penotitlan. I don't know anything about the Warriors. It would take me 10 years-

Kate Martin Williams:

To do all the research.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

To research, write and revise. I don't know that I have 10 years to get this. And so it clicked. David teaches Nawa. David is a historian. David knows everything there is to know about our Meso-American culture. And I thought, "I'll just ask him."

Kate Martin Williams:

I'm going to rope him into this.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Yes, so I knew I was going to see him in a few weeks. So I went to the conference and I said, "David, I want us to go to dinner because I have a literary proposition." And he was like, "Well, that sounds interesting." So we go to dinner and I tell him, and then he very, very sweetly says, "So do you want me to help you check your research, give you some resources?" And I said, "No, I want you to write the guide." And then he goes, "Alternating chapters." And he is hooked. From right there he is so hooked. And then he came up with the conch because he had just read an article-

Kate Martin Williams:

Oh, as the artifact.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Yes. And he said, there's a conch. They just found it's huge and it has glyphs from the Astics. And he said, "Wouldn't it be cool if those glyphs worked like a magic thing to shift and that's how they could see each other and eventually touch and fall in love?" And I was like, "Yes." So I knew I had the right person. But then doing all the planning and all the organizing of it took us about two years because it was very fresh and we were still trying to sort it out. But I mean, it's coming June 6th, so I'm excited.

Speaker 5:

Congratulations.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Thank you.

Kate Martin Williams:

Okay. Well, the first three orders right here. I'm sure there are other people in line, but we are in line too. That sounds amazing. And I have no doubt why David said yes immediately, because you're so effusive, so energetic, and it was such a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Well, thank you.

Kate Martin Williams:

I'm glad that it happened. It almost didn't because AWP is crazy, but I'm just so thrilled and it was an honor to host you on the show. Thank you.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

I just want to say thank you and bless you for bringing me in.

Kate Martin Williams:

Yeah, absolutely. Before we go, can you tell us the most WAP thing you overheard at the conference?

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Well, somebody said, "I think I have AWP Brain." And I thought, "I'm with you."

Elena Welsh:

We're all feeling that at this point.

Kate Martin Williams:

All feeling that. Well, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here.

Guadalupe Garcia McCall:

Thank you.

Phuc Luu:

Effing Shakespeare is a production of Bloom State Literary, hosted by Kate Martin Williams, Jessica Cole, and produced by me Phuc Luu. Our trustee and hardworking intern is Elena Welsh, with special thanks to Juanita Lester and the AWP staff, without whom this would not be possible.