Cynthia will read from her award-winning debut book, The Half-White Album. The reading will be followed by a conversation with Hilda, author, poet, teacher, and editor, about the making of the book. The Half-White Album is a hybrid book composed of fiction—long form and flash—creative non-fiction, and poetry. The book is told through multiple characters, yet Sylvester weaves these pieces, these fractured lives together to create one story. Join Cynthia and Hilda as they discuss the making of The Half-White Album, its threads, and the larger story the book suggests.
Cynthia Sylvester is born into the Kiyaa’áanii Clan for the Bilagáana Clan and is an enrolled member of the Diné. She is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is the host of Albuquerque DimeStories—3-Minute stories written and read by the author. Her debut book The Half-White Album, is published by the University of New Mexico Press as part of the Lynn and Lynda Miller Southwest Fiction Series. The Half-White Album is the winner of the best LGBTQ+ book in the 2023 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.
Hilda Raz has published and/or edited fourteen books, most recently Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been: New and Collected Poems. She has written memoir, What Becomes You, with Arron Raz Link, as well as poetry and literary criticism. She is co-publisher of Bosque Press and poetry editor of ABQinPrint and editor of the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series at UNMP. She lives in Placitas, NM.
