Unlike most writers I know, I did not earn an MFA in creative writing after college. Instead, with a degree in English literature in hand, I went to law school and became an attorney. Perhaps I carried with me the heartache of my late father, who had dreams of becoming a published author in the late 1950s and early ‘60s as he worked the night shift at a factory. Publishers were even less hospitable to Chicano writers than they are now, so after being rejected repeatedly, my father burned all his writing — a novel and poetry — and focused his energies on raising a family and getting educated. I assumed I’d follow the same path.
But the call of the writing life was too strong. I started to write fiction and poetry that reflected my life as the grandson of Mexican immigrants. The publishing world was much more open to my writing than it was to my father’s, and 25 years later I have published 10 books and two anthologies while practicing law.
So it is not surprising that I have a particular interest in writers who are also lawyers. (There are quite a few of us.) Among them is Orlando Ortega-Medina, whose new novel, “The Fitful Sleep of Immigrants,” is deeply rooted in both the world of law and his own experiences as a gay, Latino, Jewish man facing a broken immigration system and the homophobia of the 1990s.
Read more
