News (Noticias) Tagged ‘Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez jump-started the Latina chick-lit movement when she published the best-selling Dirty Girls Social Club five years ago. “*

But they’re the labels that slot people into corners. They’re the words that box her in and make her crazy.

With that frustration is a give-and-take. Some of those same words have propelled her success as a best-selling author, torchbearer for publishing’s chica-lit genre and recipient of several awards touting her influence on Hispanic culture.

Yet she wants people to know she’s more than just a successful Latina author. “*

Always the vocal woman. I wish she still had a blog.

“In a letter to EUR, Valdes-Rodriguez said she was disappointed with some of the negative comments in the feedback section directed at Martin Chase for taking on a Hispanic-helmed project. The author wrote:

When The Hollywood Reporter this week announced my deal with legendary film producer Debra Martin Chase to turn my bestselling novel The Dirty Girls Social Club into a movie, along with producer Nely Galan, I was overjoyed.

It marked not just my book making it to the big screen, and my first foray into the world of screenwriting. It was also a landmark collaboration between a seasoned African-American woman producer (Martin Chase) and two newcomer Hispanic women producers (me and Galan) in the white, male-dominated world of American film.”*

“”The Princess Diaries” producer Debra Martin Chase and producer-writer Nely Galan are teaming up to bring Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s novel “The Dirty Girls Social Club” to the big screen.

Galan, the former president of entertainment at the Telemundo network, is among the honorees at The Hollywood Reporter’s 25 Hispanic Women in Entertainment ceremony today at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. She optioned the film rights from Valdes-Rodriguez. The movie will be produced “

“In the spring, novelist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez will join the faculty in the University of New Mexico Department of English as a part-time instructor in fiction, teaching Eng. 521, the graduate-level prose fiction workshop in the master’s in fine arts program.”

“You can pretty much judge a “chick lit” book by its candy-hued cover. And you can probably guess what you’ll find inside: The tale of a young, stiletto-heeled heroine who finds true love and breaks through the glass ceiling – all without scratching her Jimmy Choo shoes.

Perhaps because the genre has gotten so predictable, sales have begun to flag. In hopes of expanding chick lit’s audience, publishers have begun pushing a Latina variant on the formula ”” “chica lit” novels featuring mujeres who can accessorize with the best of them. Though this subgenre is only a few years old, it already boasts a few veteran authors, including Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (”The Dirty Girls Social Club,” “Playing With Boys”), Mary Castillo (”Hot Tamara”) and Sofia Quintero (who wrote the hip-hop potboilers “Explicit Content” and “Picture Me Rollin’ ” under the pen name Black Artemis). All have new novels out this year.”

“Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, journalist and noted novelist, will give the keynote address to open Hispanic Heritage Month at the University of Delaware at 5 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 14, in Multipurpose Rooms A, B and C of the Trabant University Center.

A former staff writer for the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, Valdes-Rodriguez will focus on Hispanic pride in her address, titled “Exploding Stereotypes: Beyond the Myths.””

“When Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s THE DIRTY GIRLS SOCIAL CLUB was published in 2003, Latinas everywhere celebrated the birth of their own commercial ethnic literature. Latina characters, Latina culture, Latina stories.

Who then would have guessed that in three years the demand for stories featuring Latina characters would move beyond the Latina market and into mainstream America?

According to USA Today bestselling novelist Julie Leto, that’s just what’s happening, and she couldn’t be happier.

As her new novel, DIRTY LITTLE LIES arrives in bookstores across the country, Leto is celebrating the popularity of her Marisela Morales novels. The series’ Cuban-American ex-bounty hunter has become the alter ego of women everywhere””not just Latinas””who long for adventure, thrills and, well””why not?””some good, hot sex.

“No longer are Latinas the main characters in books targeted only for our ethnic group,” explained Leto, whose paternal grandmother was a proud Cuban-American. “These characters have gone mainstream, starring in novels that are being snapped up by anyone who appreciates a great read.” “

“Everyone in Miami knows Ricky Biscayne, the Latin pop sensation who’s about to cross over into the mainstream music scene.

He’s the center of an emotional and professional spider web that connects various women in Miami. There’s Jill Sanchez, the Latina actress and singer who also owns a line of perfumes and designer clothes. There’s Irene Gallagher, a single mother who juggles her fire fighting job and the care of her 15-year-old daughter, Sophia, who looks too much like the Latin heartthrob she dated in high school. And there’s Milan Gotay, a frumpy laxative publicist and diehard fan of Ricky who happens to be investing in her sister Geneva’s new South Beach nightclub.

Their connection to Ricky is the foundation for the humorous “Make Him Look Good,” the third novel by former Boston Globe writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.”

“Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez can be vicious as well as viciously funny. In “Make Him Look Good” she is all that. The author, whose first novel, “The Dirty Girls Social Club,” was a best seller in 2003, now tells the story of a Latin superstar and a cluster of women in his orbit. The setup guarantees the kind of celebrity infusion that makes for a tasty read.

The “Him” of the title is Ricky Biscayne - “the hottest Latin pop star on earth” - who is married to an anorexic model. An international object of lust, he demands that his sweet wife remain dangerously thin even though she is pregnant, while rekindling an affair with Jill Sanchez, the singer and actress who ruthlessly promotes herself as a brand name. She exploits her engagement to a more famous actor for every media hit it can pull.”

“I’m not supposed to like The Dirty Girls’ Social Club, but I do. It’s just not in the respected canon of the well-read individual. However, I found myself staring down at its motley cover, worn paperback with nothing else to do. I had been told I would find it hysterical, but I had never considered it worthy. Nevertheless, I’m fairly addicted to reading, and with nothing more than back issues of Cosmo to occupy me, I succumbed.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s novel is not going to be registered with the classics. I don’t know if it will ever be mentioned in a literature class, but these are not discrediting factors. The Dirty Girls Social Club is one of the most entertaining works I’ve come across in the past year. Initially, the personal voice–the slang and simplicity–can be grating on the reader. In fact, because of this characteristic, I stopped reading the book twice before page 30.”

“Joaquin at SoyBlue reports that Albuquerque’s Air America affiliate is going to test market a show featuring Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez called “Our America” that will be an English language look at politics from a Latina/o point of view. Need I say that this is something that is sorely needed in our media? Sure, there’s Latino USA that is picked up by KUVO on Sunday mornings, but that’s an NPR production with all of the faux-neutrality (i.e., kowtowing to conservatism) we’ve come to expect from NPR.”

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“Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez grew up in New Mexico, a state with a large Hispanic population.

Still, she was attacked by other girls who thought she wasn’t “Spanish enough.””

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Congrats to La Queen Sucia

“Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, the Albuquerque author of the best-selling novels “The Dirty Girls Social Club” and “Playing with Boys,” who has already gained considerable notoriety in recent months, was among those picked by the magazine in its yearly listing.

Also in the directory, which the magazine initiated in 1983, are Alan Varela of Santa Fe, singled out for his role as president of the Hispanic National Bar Association, and Eduardo Diaz, the recently hired director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque.”

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