LUCC Speaker Series: Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Join us for an evening of conversation with Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, the author of "Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything" and "How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe." She is the recipient of the 2022 Pura Belpré Award, presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth, by the Association for Library Services to Children.

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland is a Mexican American poet, novelist and painter, and a former resident of East Orange, NJ. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Alaska, Anchorage in 2017. She’s most inspired by fog and seeds and the lineages of all things. When not writing, Raquel tells stories to her plants and they tell her stories back. She lives in Tennessee with her beloved family and mountains.