My Train Leaves at Three

“Guerrero leaves the reader not just enthralled and delighted but waiting with bated breath for what she will conjure up next.”

—Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Anita de Monte Laughs Last

After her sister Nena’s sudden death, Xiomara, an Afro-Latina singer and actress born and raised in Washington Heights, is numb. With her sister gone, Xiomara, painfully close to thirty, is living in a tiny apartment with her ultra-Catholic Puerto Rican mother, and having the same shitty sex with the same shitty men that she’s been entertaining for years. Behind on rent despite two minimum-wage jobs, one of which involves singing show tunes while serving pancakes to tourists at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, Xiomara is bitingly cynical, especially in her grief, and barely treading water.

But when a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity falls into her lap—the chance to audition for Manny Santos, the most charismatic director of the moment—Xiomara sees a second chance to pursue the dream she thought she’d lost. Meanwhile, something about Santi, a new co-worker at the print shop where she spends half of her days photocopying other performers’ headshots, starts to tug at the threads of her apathy. Nothing is simple, and soon Xiomara finds herself interacting with the ugliest sides of the industry and the powerful men who control it. Sometimes the closer you are to your dreams, the further away you become from yourself, and as Xiomara grapples with this hard truth, she is forced to ask herself if she has what it takes to build a new shiny life without losing the truth of her old one.

With hopeful spirit and unapologetic energy, My Train Leaves at Three is a coming-of-age story about the balancing act between moving on and moving forward.

Hungry Hearts; Essays on Courage, Desire, and Belonging

“You’ll find kindred spirits in these tales of resilience, transformation, and joy.” —Time

Over the course of four years, the traveling love rally called Together Live brought together diverse storytellers for epic evenings of laughter, music, and hard-won wisdom to huge audiences across the country. Well-known womxn (and the occasional man) from all walks of life shared their most vulnerable truths in a radical act of love, paving the way for healing in the face of adversity.

Now, off the stage and on the pages of Hungry Hearts, sixteen of these beloved speakers offer moving, inspiring, deeply personal essays as a reminder that we can heal from grief and that divisions can be repaired. Bozoma Saint John opens herself up to love after loss; Cameron Esposito confronts the limits of self-reliance in the wake of divorce; Ashley C. Ford learns to trust herself for the first time. A heartfelt anthology of transformation, self-discovery, and courage that also includes essays by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Amena Brown, Austin Channing Brown, Natalie Guerrero, Sue Monk Kidd, Connie Lim (MILCK), Nkosingiphile Mabaso, Jillian Mercado, Priya Parker, Geena Rocero, Michael Trotter and Tanya-Blount Trotter of The War and Treaty, and Maysoon Zayid, Hungry Hearts shows how reconnecting with our own burning, undeniable intuition points us toward our unique purpose and the communities where we most belong.