JONNY GARZA VILLA
Learn more about your mentor:
Preferred Age Category: YA Preferred Genre or Sub-Genres: contemporary, speculative contemporary As a mentor I love working on: voice, sensory writing, story structure Areas of expertise/strengths as a mentor: recognizing and identifying beats and flow (and then breaking the rules as needed!) Areas of weakness as a mentor: writing a succinct synopsis (but, let's be honest, who is?) |
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ABOUT ANDER AND SANTI WERE HERE...
Aristotle and Dante meets The Hate U Give meets The Sun Is Also A Star: A stunning YA contemporary love story about a Mexican-American teen who falls in love with an undocumented Mexican boy.
Finding home. Falling in love. Fighting to belong.
The Santos Vista neighborhood of San Antonio, Texas, is all Ander Lopez has ever known. The smell of pan dulce. The mixture of Spanish and English filling the streets. And, especially their job at their family's taquería. It's the place that has inspired Ander as a muralist, and, as they get ready to leave for art school, it's all of these things that give them hesitancy. That give them the thought, are they ready to leave it all behind?
To keep Ander from becoming complacent during their gap year, their family "fires" them so they can transition from restaurant life to focusing on their murals and prepare for college. That is, until they meet Santiago Garcia, the hot new waiter. Falling for each other becomes as natural as breathing. Through Santi's eyes, Ander starts to understand who they are and want to be as an artist, and Ander becomes Santi's first steps toward making Santos Vista and the United States feel like home.
Until ICE agents come for Santi, and Ander realizes how fragile that sense of home is. How love can only hold on so long when the whole world is against them. And when, eventually, the world starts to win.
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Aristotle and Dante meets The Hate U Give meets The Sun Is Also A Star: A stunning YA contemporary love story about a Mexican-American teen who falls in love with an undocumented Mexican boy.
Finding home. Falling in love. Fighting to belong.
The Santos Vista neighborhood of San Antonio, Texas, is all Ander Lopez has ever known. The smell of pan dulce. The mixture of Spanish and English filling the streets. And, especially their job at their family's taquería. It's the place that has inspired Ander as a muralist, and, as they get ready to leave for art school, it's all of these things that give them hesitancy. That give them the thought, are they ready to leave it all behind?
To keep Ander from becoming complacent during their gap year, their family "fires" them so they can transition from restaurant life to focusing on their murals and prepare for college. That is, until they meet Santiago Garcia, the hot new waiter. Falling for each other becomes as natural as breathing. Through Santi's eyes, Ander starts to understand who they are and want to be as an artist, and Ander becomes Santi's first steps toward making Santos Vista and the United States feel like home.
Until ICE agents come for Santi, and Ander realizes how fragile that sense of home is. How love can only hold on so long when the whole world is against them. And when, eventually, the world starts to win.
ADD TO GOODREADS
ORDER
ABOUT JONNY...
Jonny Garza Villa is a product of the Great State of Texas, born and raised near and along the Gulf Coast and currently lives in San Antonio. They are a Sagittarius sun, Capricorn everything else, a former very bad baseball player, and a former pretty good drag queen.
Jonny is an author of contemporary young adult novels inspired by their own Tejane & Chicane and queer identities including their debut novel Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun, a Pura Belpré Honor Book, a Finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters' Jean Flynn Award for Best Young Adult Book, and a Kirkus Best YA Fiction of 2021 selection; Ander & Santi Were Here, a Barnes & Noble YA Book Club selection, a LatineLit Bestseller, an AudioFile Earphone Award Winner, and named a Best YA of 2023 selection by Bookshop.org and Audible; and Canto Contigo, expected 2024.
When not writing, Jonny enjoys reading, playing Dungeons and Dragons (bard main) and Super Smash Bros. (Inkling main), cooking, listening to Selena, caring for their many cacti children, and rewatching their favorite seasons of Dimension20.
Jonny is a Literary Death Match champion, a member of Las Musas—a collective of traditionally published Latina authors and Latine authors of marginalized genders writing children's and young adult literature—and has been a mentor with the Write Team Mentorship Program and SmoochPit. They have participated in numerous festivals including the Texas Book Festival, the Latinx KidLit Book Festival, Corpus Christi's Bookfest By The Bay, the San Antonio Book Fest, Pride Book Fest, Bronx Book Fest, Border Book Bash, the Bookmarks Festival of Books & Authors, YALLwest and YALLfest.
www.jonnygarzavilla.com
Jonny Garza Villa is a product of the Great State of Texas, born and raised near and along the Gulf Coast and currently lives in San Antonio. They are a Sagittarius sun, Capricorn everything else, a former very bad baseball player, and a former pretty good drag queen.
Jonny is an author of contemporary young adult novels inspired by their own Tejane & Chicane and queer identities including their debut novel Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun, a Pura Belpré Honor Book, a Finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters' Jean Flynn Award for Best Young Adult Book, and a Kirkus Best YA Fiction of 2021 selection; Ander & Santi Were Here, a Barnes & Noble YA Book Club selection, a LatineLit Bestseller, an AudioFile Earphone Award Winner, and named a Best YA of 2023 selection by Bookshop.org and Audible; and Canto Contigo, expected 2024.
When not writing, Jonny enjoys reading, playing Dungeons and Dragons (bard main) and Super Smash Bros. (Inkling main), cooking, listening to Selena, caring for their many cacti children, and rewatching their favorite seasons of Dimension20.
Jonny is a Literary Death Match champion, a member of Las Musas—a collective of traditionally published Latina authors and Latine authors of marginalized genders writing children's and young adult literature—and has been a mentor with the Write Team Mentorship Program and SmoochPit. They have participated in numerous festivals including the Texas Book Festival, the Latinx KidLit Book Festival, Corpus Christi's Bookfest By The Bay, the San Antonio Book Fest, Pride Book Fest, Bronx Book Fest, Border Book Bash, the Bookmarks Festival of Books & Authors, YALLwest and YALLfest.
www.jonnygarzavilla.com