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A.J. Rodriguez

@soyajrodriguez

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𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔅𝔲𝔯𝔮𝔲𝔢𝔫̃𝔬 𝔅𝔞𝔯𝔡
Fellow: @macdowell1907 @yaddotoday
Fictions: @guernicamag @commonmag @newenglandreview et al.
Rep: Alexa Stark, Writers House

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A torrent of emotion surrounds this post, this (good) news. We’re supposed to celebrate good news, celebrate individual accomplishment. But lately I’m struggling to think or feel, let alone celebrate, anything that isn’t tied to the collective, tied to how we are all living and dying, living and dying, over and over. I’m struggling to find worth in centering my personal achievement, even though receiving the 2024 Granum Prize is the single most significant event of my life as a writer (so far). Yet in my struggling I see the obvious. I see the struggle. Our collective struggle. And in our struggle I see LUCHADORES, the novel that the miraculous folks at the @granum_foundation have so graciously chosen for this honor. This project is about people struggling, people fighting for their lives, fighting for their dead. That’s what I want to celebrate right now, the recognition and honoring of struggle. So thank you, Davin, Troy, Marytza, everyone. Thank you for giving me this incredible opportunity. Now it’s time to get to work. La lucha sigue. by @soyajrodriguez

MONDAY, 7PM: Meet A.J. Rodriguez at @crowninnbk! Swipe through to read an excerpt of his story “Inocentes” at @guernica: https://www.guernicamag.com/inocentes/

BIO:
A.J. Rodriguez was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Oregon’s MFA program. His work has received the Granum Foundation Prize and been supported by MacDowell, Yaddo, the Kerouac Project, and the Hawthornden Foundation. His stories have won CRAFT’s Flash Fiction Contest, the Swamp Pink Fiction Prize, second place in Salamander’s Fiction Contest, and the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction from Pleiades. Others appear in Guernica, The Common, New England Review, and elsewhere. by @soyajrodriguez

A few years back, during my MFA, my grandmother was ready to move on, and I wasn’t. I wrote a story to prepare, to begin mourning. It was my way of opening a door and letting the part of her that lives within me walk through to the other side. I learned later that the night I finished the first draft, submitted it for workshop, she passed. This story takes place the night that two young men lose their own grandmother.

Sometimes there’s a harmony to things, one so awful and beautiful all you can do is listen, let it break you, let it put you back together anew. This story is about those harmonies, how they stretch across time and space, life and death. It also talks about Día de Muertos. It now appears in @guernicamag right before Día de Muertos.

Thank you endlessly @williampeishih for hearing these words, for ushering them through their own door. Now they’re yours, whenever you want them, just like every song that’s ever been sung.

En memoria de Maria. by @soyajrodriguez

Y ya he vuelto. by @soyajrodriguez

Doing life for the 28th year in a row means new author photo, means celebrating the people who made 27 feel abundantly alive. Here they are, all in one breath. by @soyajrodriguez

Felt in the air. Fills lungs, chills bones, sends shivers down through the feet, back into the earth. The same earth holding your family, the same family holding you, making the weight of this world a little lighter. Oh to be home, home, home. It’s amor a madre, joyo. by @soyajrodriguez

And now on to the next one! Baffled. Astounded. Teeming with agradecimientos. Can’t wait to meet you in 2024 @yaddotoday by @soyajrodriguez

Look, I haven’t ever laughed and cried and listened and wrote and loved humans like I did during my #macdowellresidency My eyes have dried but my heart is still full. Thank you everyone. For everything. @macdowell1907 by @soyajrodriguez

My favorite part of being at @macdowell1907 is the community of immensely talented artists who embrace you wholeheartedly, who show up to listen to you read your stories after dinner, who do things like draw you the way @mindcaptive drew me, who take pictures of you reading and being drawn like @chrisiduma did here. Boundless thanks. Boundless gratitude. #macdowellresidency by @soyajrodriguez

Thanks, pvd, for giving me all these mirrors to take selfies with my son. Was a strange rollercoaster of a year here, one I am happy to have ridden. Until we meet again, 401. by @soyajrodriguez

June was good. I found a new mirror to take selfies with my son. Other things happened, too. by @soyajrodriguez

Papi’s first residency! Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’ll be joining a lineage of artists that includes James Baldwin, Louise Erdrich, Colson Whitehead, and so many more of my literary heroes. Infinite thanks to all those at @macdowell1907 who have granted me the honor of being a MacDowell Fellow. Nos vemos en Agosto. by @soyajrodriguez