Update May 1, 2022: Unfortunately, the visit from Luis Alberto Urrea has been postponed until fall. More information will come when a new schedule is confirmed.
Critically acclaimed and award-winning author Luis Alberto Urrea will read from and discuss his work on the Linfield University McMinnville Campus at 5:30 p.m. May 3 in the Jereld R. Nicholson Library.
Urrea’s visit is part of the Mac Reads Series, a collaborative partnership between Linfield, the McMinnville Public Library and Third Street Books with the goal of inspiring community-wide conversations around a topic.
Urrea’s “The House of Broken Angels,” which will be the focus of his McMinnville visit, takes place during one weekend. Miguel Angel De La Cruz, aka “Big Angel,” is dying but wants one last birthday bash. Days before his planned celebration, his mother passes away prompting reckonings of all sorts as family members reminisce under the San Diego sun and stars, sharing stories about growing up in Mexico, leaving Mexico and making a home in the U.S.
The Nicholson Library has 50 free copies of the book available at the front desk. They are intended to be read and shared with others interested in joining the Mac Reads conversation. Urrea will sign books at the event. Copies of his work will be available for purchase during the event from Third Street Books.
Attendees should prepare for more than a mere reading when Urrea takes the stage, said Joe Wilkins, director of Linfield’s creative writing program and author of “Fall Back Down When I Die.”
“Luis does more than read his work; he performs his work. He’s a bona fide literary superstar,” Wilkins said. “Luis’s novels are worlds unto themselves, where all things are splendid, fraught, compelling and joyous.”
While in McMinnville, Urrea will also participate in a book club meeting at McMinnville Public Library and visit with students in Linfield’s poetry and Spanish classes. Urrea’s Linfield visit concludes as a featured speaker in the university’s annual Spanglish Celebration at 4 p.m., May 4. The celebration is open to the public.
“Luis is one of the kindest, most generous people I know,” Wilkins said. “You see that fierce compassion in his stories, you see it in his presence. And he will be sharing his gift with Linfield and McMinnville’s writing community.”
In 2005, Urrea’s “The Devil’s Highway” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction. He is a member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame and author of 17 books spanning poetry, fiction, nonfiction and essays. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Urrea is most recognized as a border writer, though he says, “I am more interested in bridges, not borders.”
Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing and completed his graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He currently lives with his family in Naperville, Ill., where he is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
