Award-winning novelist Reyna Grande knows all about being poor…and feeling isolated.
Reyna, who is Pasadena City College’s first Writer in Residence, draws on her own experiences in her two novels, Dancing With Butterflies and Across a Hundred Mountains, and her memoir, The Distance Between Us. Reyna’s writing evokes her experiences of growing up in one of the poorest states in Mexico, crossing illegally to the United States and some of the experiences that awaited her and her family, as immigrants.
PCC alumna Reyna offered both a creative writing workshop and a lecture during her time at PCC as Writer in Residence. She talked with Lancer Radio reporter Dot Cannon about her experiences, her memoir The Distance Between Us and what she tells her own students about writing.