WATCH: Patricia Santana on Why Young Adult Fiction Is For Everyone

Authors in the Tent is a professionally filmed series of interviews with established and emerging authors conducted in a tent Ona Russell purchased during the pandemic. Inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron and the 1001 Arabian Nights, the tent—elemental, ancient, and ubiquitous—serves as a magical backdrop for literary conversation.

In the second episode, Ona Russell talks with Patricia Santana about Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility and the sequel, Ghosts of El Grullo, which captures a young woman’s struggle to create her own identity amidst a shattered, first-generation immigrant American family.

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This series is in support of the charities Tents-4-Homeless, PATH, Alpha Project, and VVSD.

Ona Russell holds a PhD in literature from UC San Diego where she also taught for many years. She is author of three award-winning historical mysteries and the recently released Son of Nothingness: A Novel of Appearances.

Patricia Santana is chair of the foreign languages department and professor of Spanish at Cuyamaca College, El Cajon, California. Her earlier book, Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility (UNM Press), received the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and was selected by the American Library Association as a Best Book for Young Adults.