Sandra Cisneros, author of “The House on Mango Street,” “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories” and “Martita, I Remember You,” will speak with Erika Sanchez at Readings and Conversation.
Sandra Cisneros, author of “The House on Mango Street,” “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories” and “Martita, I Remember You,” will speak with Erika Sanchez at Readings and Conversation.
Kurt Zwolfer doesn’t remember how long The Cabin’s Reading & Conversations have been going on.
It might be 20 years, or maybe 18. He can’t say. All he knows is that since its inception, the event has grown into the literary event of the year.
What started as four authors coming to Boise to talk about their novels has grown into a yearly event where writers from around the world come and discuss their creativity, inspiration and share their secrets for audiences in Boise.
“We’ve got a really good literary town,” said Zwolfer, the executive director of The Cabin.
Essayist, novelist and poet Sandra Cisneros will kick off the 2021 – 22 Cabin’s Readings & Conversations series. Interviewing Cisneros will be fellow novelist, Erika Sanchez, the writer of the young adult novel “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.” The exclusive online talk is at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 7.
Cisneros, author of “The House on Mango Street,” “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories” and “Caramelo,” spoke at The Reading & Conversation stage in the early 2000s and is returning to talk about the release of her new book “Martita, I Remember You.”
The organizers for the Reading & Conversation series have a simple mission statement with the conversations — diversity. Whether it’s differing bodies of work or disparate backgrounds, Zwolfer just hopes they will bring new ideas to readers in Boise.
“It’s a combination of writers with an extensive body of work and writers that we want our audience to be familiar with,” Zwolfer said.
For anyone new to the Readings & Conversations series who hasn’t read the books don’t fret; reading a selection of each author’s books isn’t a requirement. Some audience members use the events as a guide for what novels to add to their booklists and some just want to hear from the authors, Zwolfer said. The goal of the series is to get conversations going and hopefully find new books along the way.
“You don’t have to have a knowledge of the authors going in,” Zwolfer said. “It’s about the love of reading. It’s about learning new issues and expanding on what we know. It’s about the conversations it starts. We hope people talk.”
The future for the in-person events is still undecided — conversations concerning what health and safety standards will be practiced are still being had, said Ashley Smith, the marketing and communication manager for The Cabin.
“We’ve opted to postpone these conversations for a couple of weeks until we have a clearer idea of where we’re at with COVID,” Smith said. “We know that we’ll do everything in our power to make it safe.”