• April events:
Happy April! It’s a busy month for literary events. April marks National Poetry Month and two prominent Latino poets have earned the title of Poet Laureate for their places of residence. Juan Felipe Herrera, right, was named California’s first Latino Poet Laureate. Carmen Tafolla earned that same title from the city of San Antonio.
April is also the month Pat Mora is celebrating Díapalooza, leading up to the April 30 Día: El día de los niños/El día de los libros, Children’s Day/Book. The website includes tons of ideas to celebrate the day, as well as list of author and illustrator ambassadors. The event also inspired the book Book Fiesta!
Awards:
• Monica Brown won a Christopher Award, which is given to artists “whose work affirms the highest values of the human spirit,” for her book, Waiting for the Biblioburro.
• Alex Sanchez’s (right) young adult novel Boyfriends With Girlfriends and Jeanne Córdova’s When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution received nominations from the Lambda Literary Awards, which honors gay-lesbian-bisexual-trangendered works. Other nominated books include Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, edited by Michael Hames-García and Ernesto Javier Martínez, and ¡Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba, by Jafari S. Allen. Winners will be announced in June.
• Caridad Piñeiro’s The Lost was nominated for a RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America in the Paranormal Category. Winners will be announced in July.
Author Notes:
• Charles Rice-Gonzalez was profiled in The New York Daily News.
• Dagoberto Gilb read his works at a recent PEN Faulkner Foundation event.
The Hispanic Reader 
Thank you so much for the mention! It’s very exciting to be nominated and I hope readers will enjoy THE LOST, a very different kind of paranormal.
Thank you so much for the mentioned. I am honored and excited to be nominated for the RITA.
What a wonderful and inspiring list of writers and books. This provides a handy reading list for spring. Thanks!