Contact: Beverly S.

Herrera FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tel: (956) 727-5737
Cell: (956) 744-8702
Email: laredofoodforthought@yahoo.com

Pulitzer Prize-finalist headlines One City, One Book

Food drives, book discussions among planned activities

Laredo, TX – Sponsors of the third annual One City, One Book festival that brought Holocaust
survivor Gerda Weissman Klein and Pulitzer Prize winner Sonia Nazario have unveiled this
year’s author and book. As a bonus, he will bring the illustrator or his latest graphic novel,
making this year a two-for-one deal.

Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Into the Beautiful North, and Pulitzer finalist for The Devil’s
Highway, will visit the city to speak at Laredo Community College’s Guadalupe and Lilia
Martinez Fine Arts Center, September 29. He will be accompanied by the illustrator of his
graphic novel, Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush, Christopher Cardinale. Both books will be featured
during this year’s events.

Into the Beautiful North is a fictional story of a small town in Mexico where all the men have left
to go north. A group of women, inspired by the movie The Magnificent Seven, decide to journey
north to convince them to come home. Although it is one of his newest books, it has already
earned a citation of excellence from the American Library Association Rainbow’s Project.

The Food for Thought Foundation, the Laredo Public Library, the City of Laredo, LCC, UISD,
LISD, and St. Augustine, along with local businesses, are sponsoring the event. This year’s
theme focuses on community pride and working together to solve problems. It is quest novel
written in the tradition of The Wizard of Oz or Jason and the Argonauts, where the hero
innocently believes she will be able to accomplish an impossible task.

According to Alexander librarian and Food for Thought co-founder Carmen Escamilla, “Into the
Beautiful North is an engaging and riotous cross between Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Don
Quixote with a Hispanic twist!”

Writer Jincy Willett reviewed the book for the San Diego Union-Tribune, stating that, “Among
the many pleasures of Into the Beautiful North is its big-hearted view of the United States as a
foreign Country.” Its descriptions represent what the author knows first-hand, having grown up
in Tijuana and San Diego.
Another review from www.reviewsofbooks.com/intothebeautifulnorth/ called the book. “a
refreshing antidote to all the negativity currently surrounding Mexico, with its drug cartels,
police-abandoned cities and killer flu.”

The addition of Luis Urrea’s graphic novel, Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush, is aimed to combine art
and literature. Illustrator Christopher Cardinale will speak to a group of Laredo students and host
a demonstration of his work at the Laredo Public Library on the morning of September 29. He
will then accompany Mr. Urrea at that evening’s lecture.

Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush is a story taken from a collection of Urrea’s short stories entitled, Six
Kinds of Sky. The narrator, a boy in the little town of Rosario, combines the natural world with
magical forces. Mr. Mendoza, uses his paintbrush to point out the hypocrisy and small-
mindedness of the townspeople. Illustrator Christopher Cardinale presents each panel in the form
of a static woodcut interacting “dynamically with surrounding action.”

According to Kirkus Reviews, “Urrea’s delightful tale of morality and meaning is rendered
masterfully by Cardinale’s boisterous illustrations, their bold outlines providing heft to the
surrealism. This tale, in their steady hands, becomes a cheeky tour through elements of Latin pop
culture: Hints of Romero’s horrors, Rivera’s aesthetics and Garcia Marquez’s magical realism all
make their appearance here. An enchanting exploration of life’s myriad mysteries.”

Luis Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother. He has
won numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays. Urrea was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist
for nonfiction and is a member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame. He attended the University
of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate
studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. His books have been chosen for more than thirty
cities and colleges for One Book programs. He has taught at Harvard, Massachusetts Bay
Community College and the University of Colorado. At the University of Louisiana-Lafayette
Urrea was the writer in residence. Currently he lives with his family in Naperville, Illinois and is
a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Christopher Cardinale grew up in five states, ranging from Ohio to New Mexico as his educator
parents moved. He has lived in Guatemala and Mexico, working with grassroots organizations
and painting murals. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has painted large-scale
murals in New York, Italy, Greece and Mexico. His drawings of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath
became the first cover story comic in Punk Planet’s history. His most recent project is the
illustration of Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush. Francisca Goldsmith of Booklist Review says that the
book contains scenes which are, “laugh-aloud fully, others thrillingly chilling, and the whole a
fable-like memoir that should win Urrea and Cardinale a large, welcoming audience.”

The Food for Thought Foundation was started in March 2008 to combat hunger and illiteracy in
Laredo. Escamilla came up with the idea to bring the One City, One Book program to Laredo
after studying about similar programs in other cities.

Urrea and Cardinale will stay at La Posada, which has been designated as the official hotel for
One City One Book authors.

The activities throughout August and September, including an art fest, four book discussions, a
movie screening and four food drive days, will lead up to the illustrator’s morning talk with
students at the library and the author’s speech, A Conversation with Luis Urrea on September 29,
6 – 8 pm at the Laredo Community College’s Guadalupe and Lilia Martinez Fine Arts Center. In
order to receive a ticket to the talk, members of the public must attend one book discussion or
film screening and donate five non-perishable food items. The food will be donated to local food
banks.

The Laredo Public Library has 50 copies of the Into the Beautiful North in English and 30 in
Spanish available for checkout. They also have copies of Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush available
for checkout. The library will also help sponsor the book discussions and film screenings of The
Magnificent Seven, which inspired the main character of Into the Beautiful North.

Copies of the books will be available at the press conference and at the various book discussions
and the film screening. Mary Benavides will have the book available for sale through her store,
Laredo Books & More. To order a copy, call her at 956-508-3540, or email her at
laredobooks@hotmail.com .

The Library of Congress’s “One Book” Web site states, “‘One Book’ projects (community-wide
reading programs), initiated by the Washington Center for the Book in 1998, are being
introduced across the U.S.A. and around the world.”

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Members of the media and public are encouraged to visit laredofoodforthought.blogspot.com for
a full calendar of events, updates and further information involving One City, One Book. For
more information concerning Luis Urrea, you may contact Beverly Herrera at 956-744-8702 or
laredofoodforthought@yahoo.com. You may also contact Cristina Herrera at 956-286-8706 or
cherrera@mail.utexas.edu.

To get more information on the Laredo Public Library’s activities concerning One City, One
Book, call Pam Burrell at 795-2400, ext. 2268, email her at pam@laredolibrary.org. or go to
www.laredolibrary.org.