Here comes one more renowned Author’s interview in WorldAuthors.Org’s UNCUT WITH LUCIA series. WorldAuthors.Org (a not-for-profit organization) is a division of the Proficient Knowledge Group. It is a one-of-a-kind platform created specifically to showcase and promote the work of aspiring and established writers, authors, poets, and content creators. This platform assists authors and writers in promoting their work to a global audience.
Recently, Lucia, famous author and host of UNCUT WITH LUCIA, interviewed famous author J.L. Torres, whose work focuses on the diasporican experience—living in the in-betweenness that shapes and informs the Puerto Rican experience. He has written many books, including The Family Terrorist and Other Stories, The Accidental Native, and Boricua Passport, a poetry collection. He aims to go beyond issues of identity, though these are central to that experience.
Torres was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico, grew up in the South Bronx and completed his formal education in the United States. He then returned to the island in search of roots and material for his writing. He returned to New York after years of teaching at the college level there. In addition to New York City, he has lived in Madrid, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Barcelona.
Speaking about his writing, Torres said, “Through my writing, I am exploring what it means to live a life yearning for ‘belongingness’ at a time when you’re told the nation and home are empty concepts, and you have no historical memory of what they ever meant.”
The gifted author wishes to evaluate what this means in a world shrinking and where geography cannot ground anything.
J.L. Torres received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and his MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He has written for magazines and newspapers, and he was the Editor of Latin NY, a popular but now-defunct Salsa magazine. He also had a string of stories published in small magazines. Growing Up Latino, a groundbreaking anthology published by Houghton-Mifflin, featured one of his stories.
He focused his creative writing efforts on poetry while working on his doctorate and learning to write critical essays. He has had poems published in North American Review, Denver Quarterly, the Americas Review, Crab Orchard Review, Bilingual Review, Connecticut Review, Tulane Review, and Puerto del Sol, among other journals.
He is currently focusing on writing fictional stories and has had many stories published in magazines such as the Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Americas Review, and Reunion: The Dallas Review. The Tomas Rivera Book Prize was awarded to J.L. Torres’s second short story collection, Migrations, in 2020. The collection will be published on June 1, 2021, by LARB Libros.
He’s currently working on a novella about Puerto Rican icon Roberto Clemente. He lives in Plattsburgh, New York, dubbed “carajo county” by friends and family with his wife and two sons.
