Today in the ArtZany Radio studio Paula Granquist welcomes author Anika Fajardo to discuss her memoir Magical Realism for Non-Believers and the middle-grade novel What if a Fish.
anikafajardo.com
Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota. She is the author of a book about that experience, Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir of Finding Family (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), which was awarded Best Book (Nonfiction) of 2020 from City Pages and was a finalist for the 2020 Minnesota Book Award. Her debut middle-grade novel What If a Fish (Simon & Schuster, 2020) was awarded the 2021 Minnesota Book Award. Her next book for young readers, Meet Me Halfway (Simon & Schuster) will be published in spring 2022.
Her writing for adults and children has appeared in numerous publications including Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction (Norton), We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (U of Minnesota Press), and Sky Blue Waters: Great Stories for Young Readers (U of Minnesota Press). Fajardo also wrote Encanto: A Tale of Three Sisters, the middle-grade tie-in novel for the Disney film Encanto. She has earned awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Loft Literary Center.
A writer, editor, and teacher, she lives with her family in the very literary city of Minneapolis.
