hispanic heritage month – Andrew Careaga

Friday Five: Latiné writer Melissa Flores Anderson

‘Take chances in where you submit your writing and don’t count yourself out.’

To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 through October 15), I’m featuring some rising writers of Hispanic heritage in these Friday Five interviews. This week’s spotlight is on Melissa Flores Anderson, a Latiné writer and native Californian whose debut full-length short story collection, All and Then None of You, came out earlier this month from Cowboy Jamboree Press. This collection of 21 stories and a novella is praised for its portrayal of the “universal yearns, hopes, and griefs of everyday working people.” I’m about two-thirds of the way through the collection, and at every turn of the page I’m encountering surprising and intriguing prose, much as one might find unexpected sights on a drive along California’s back roads. Sights that make you want to pull over and have a look around.

Melissa’s flash and long-form fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in over 50 literary magazines, anthologies, and reading series, including swamp pink, Chapter House, Roi Fainéant, and HAD. A reader and editor for Roi Fainéant Press, she also co-authored the 2025 novelette Roadkill (ELJ Editions) and the chapbook A Body in Motion (JAKE). Read on to learn more about Melissa’s new short story collection, how road trips and country music play a role in the book’s formation, her literary influences, how her Mexican American heritage informs her writing, and a fun, buggy Easter egg contained in the book.

Celebrate Hispanic heritage: read Hispanic/Latinx writers

‘… culture shapes identity and defines possibility’ and ‘teaches us who we are, what to believe, and how to dream.’

National Hispanic Heritage Month is upon us once again in the USA, and as has become my custom, I plan to devote quite a bit of my reading time to literature by people of Hispanic heritage this month.

I think it’s important to appreciate, learn from, and celebrate the contributions of cultures beyond our mainstream American culture. I agree with the words of actress, director, and producer America Ferrera, who writes in her introduction to America Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures, “culture shapes identity and defines possibility” and “teaches us who we are, what to believe, and how to dream. We should all be able to look at the world around us and see a reflection of our true lived experiences. Until then, the American story will never be complete.”

Friday Five: great classic Hispanic novels

Here we are in the middle of National Hispanic Heritage Month in the USA, and as promised in my earlier Friday Five that highlighted contemporary Hispanic authors you should read, today I’m sharing my picks for five “classic” novels by Hispanic writers.

Friday Five: contemporary Hispanic authors you should read

You can be forgiven for not knowing we are in the midst of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Even I, a pocho but still proud of my Hispanic heritage (or Latino/a/x, if you prefer), often find myself taken by surprise when this annual event shows up on the calendar — probably because it’s a “month” that really isn’t. It starts in the middle of September and ends in the middle of October, an oddity that probably contributes to its lack of visibility.

Hispanic authors, too, often lack visibility in the mainstream of literature. Now that we’re almost a week into National Hispanic Heritage Month, I want to devote this Friday Five to Hispanic writers. Although many exceptional U.S. writers have Hispanic roots, they’re often overshadowed in the literary world.