Alejandro Heredia

A couple of months ago @worldofmp reached out to me to share the incredible news that LOCA had been selected by the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez for one of their English courses, taught to over 500 students. Last week, I was able to visit the students and professors, got to run a writing workshop about community, and even got to do an event in San Juan’s La Goyco, in convo w/ @sora.ferri . I am astounded by the Puerto Rican spirit. Everywhere I went, whether it was talking to students, or talking to an elder at that park in San Juan with all the cute cats, I got the sense that people in PR know who they are and where they come from. Even if the future is uncertain, that incredible sense of collective identity is something the rest of the world (and that neighboring island where I was born) could learn from. Thank you to Marcy, Dr. Mary Sefranek, and everyone at the university for coordinating my visit. To be able to travel so far but so close to home because of my art is wild. Shout out to LOCA for making these beautiful opportunities possible.

Tried my hand at speculative fiction for this beautiful anthology. My favorite part of the process was writing the artist statement, which pushed writers to consider how social justice and organizing work impacted the creation of their pieces. I wrote about my time organizing against gentrification in The Bronx in 2016 and how that inspires some of my fiction. My story, “If I Could Stay With You On Earth” was inspired by the question: what if in a hundred years we have a train shuttle that connects the 4,5, and 6 train lines in The Bronx? In a world that demands so much of our attention on the obliterating present, it was nice to consider the future of my borough, and how public transportation, housing, and city planning shapes the way we do friendship.

LOCA paperback is out! With a beautiful introduction by @funnyaida , stickers from @teatime.pictures @center4fiction , and blurbs from @jorgie_boo_boo , @mamasotamundo , @literapy_nyc , and @mtperezo on the cover! GIVEAWAY for educators and community organizers!!! ☀️ The first five educators/community organizers to share this video and send me a DM will get a free signed copy of the book! I really want to get the book out there in college classrooms and community spaces, so hit me up! 🤙🏽

LOCA turns one ! ⚡️⚡️⚡️ A year ago LOCA hit the streets at a party in partnership with @papijuicebk , which was the best way to bring to life a novel about young queer + Dominican people. We danced and sang and since then, LOCA has been up to some incredible things: 1) I was invited to @tables.of.contents , where they made LOCA themed cocktail, and pound cake + angel cake, inspired by Don Julio’s baking journey (if you know, you know). When I saw that, I almost cried 😂 2) I was able to particate in a bunch of cool podcasts, including a feature on @latinousa . One of the highlights of my debut year was walking around the bronx with @reynaldoleanosjr and sharing the world of the book. 3) LOCA was chosen for @teatime.pictures book club and Dakota Johnson gave my book a lil shout out on national television. 4) I got to do an event with @acevedowrites in partnership with @dominicanwriters and @wordupbooks . I loved doing events all over the country, but Uptown NYC just hits different! 5) Loca was featured in book clubs and read by people from all over the country. A book has a proper life because of its readers, so thank you, ALL OF YOU, for spending an hour or ten with those characters, with my sentences. From the beginning I have tried to be intentional and true to the energy of the book. Sometimes that’s been fruitful and beautiful. Sometimes it’s been challenging. I learned, for example, that when you are uncompromising, when you refuse to tapdance or over perform your identities, you might alienate folks who are not used to people like you walking into a room fully formed as an individual, who expect instead the “urban” or “festive” version they think you ought to be. In my life and in my work, I have always refused to diminish myself to appeal to groupthink and legibility. I tell myself, if the world will have me, it’ll have to take me for me. It gets me in trouble sometimes, but, eh, I quite like that about myself. :) I am glad for Loca, with its clarity and its imperfections. I had a vision in the eye of my mind, now that vision’s in a book. It’s a beautiful beginning. 🪞🐉🪞

February 3rd | 32 “All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.“ - MN or “sin tu amor, baby, me desaparezco Sin tu amor, baby, soy igual al resto Soy de amor, soy de amor, soy de amor“ - Latín Mafia

End of year festivities for Loca. 1-2: at @center4fiction celebrating the finalists for the First Novel Award. The best part of the experience was hanging out with the other finalists, all brilliant and wonderful and generous. 3-4: @nativesonnow put together a beautiful list of Black queer folks doing dope work, and I’m honored to be included among a beautiful cast of people. 5-6: Loca was selected by @debutiful as one of the best debuts of the year, and by @electricliterature as one of their favorite novels of the year. Professional stuff aside: Nabokov begins his autobiography by writing, “Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.” With these long nights, and the winter solstice in just a few days, I try to focus on the feast of light around me. The other day I went on a walk to move beyond my endless doubt and all the problems of my little life, and as I considered the white snow on the ground and the encumbered sunlight, I thought, “Geez, these thin hours are very precious.” It’s very nice to be alive. It’s very nice to think and write. This year destroyed me a little. But eh, who needs a stubborn “self.” I think I like what I’m becoming. Thank you for believing in me.

🌟 Highlights from recent events: Slides 1-3: At @wordupbooks in conversation with @funnyaida ! Photo credit to the amazing @eabreuvisuals Slides 3-6: hanging out with the great folks at @elc_ide @esteelaudercompanies ! It’s a privilege to be able to share space with such generous minds to talk about the power of storytelling. Tbh, it’s hard these days, to stay focused. But when I show up to an event, my crankiness and cynicism melts away and I’m pushed to continue showing up as my best self. I’ve learned to take that very seriously. If one person or fifty show up to hear me speak, I’d like to continue showing with courage and conviction in defense of books and the literary arts, which have given my life so much meaning. Thank you for your continued support of LOCA this Fall. The book has been out for seven months, but it feels like new every time someone shares with me that they felt seen or challenged by the locas in those pages. It inspires me to keep writing, to show up and face the blank page every morning. I hope you’re having a very fun spooky season. I don’t get much rest these days but I hope to get more of it in the next few weeks. Maybe I’ll restart Buffy or 30 rock or one of those comfort shows you can cuddle up with for hours 😊

Hello! My name is Alejandro Heredia, and I’m the author of the novel LOCA. I read Loose Woman in my late teens, and it was one of the first times in my life that I saw Latina women unencumbered by stereotype or reductive myths on the page. This collection offers us so much: 90s nostalgia, melancholic heartbreak, sexy adventure, and a poetic voice that vacillates between wild ferocity and tenderness. Every time I return to it I’m awed by Cisneros and her ability to craft images that will stick with you for a lifetime.

Today I got the news that Loca was shortlisted for the 2025 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. I’m in awe and filled with so much gratitude. 🌟🌟🌟 I want to thank @center4fiction and the luminary judges for seeing promise in my work. It’s an honor to be nominated alongside these incredible writers, both on the long list and the short list. My tbr list just got a lot longer! I also want to say: It is very validating to be seen by an institution that I admire, right here at home in New York. Just a couple of weeks ago I was at The Center for a book club gathering around Jean Rhys’s novel “Wide Sargasso Sea.” This irony is not lost on me. With that novel, Jean Rhys exploded the literary cannon and brought Caribbean people out from the metaphorical attic and to the center stage of literature. It’s because of her, many other writers, and the institutions that support us, that Im able to write and be seen and taken seriously for my writing. The Center for Fiction does so much incredible work to support books, authors, and the literary arts. They host book clubs and writing classes and they have this gorgeously curated bookstore managed by really kind people. Go check out their IG and website to learn more about their work! This kid from the boogie down Bronx, from Santo Domingo, is very grateful today. I hope to continue making you all proud. 🌱☀️

Coming up in a week! Been working really hard to make this event, my only public event in NYC this fall, a special one. Recently, I had a great conversation about the life of a book with my editor, and he shared wisdom which was really helpful: it’s easier to get people hype about a book when it comes out. But the real challenge is to keep people engaged over time. A book, like any piece of art, has to live in the world beyond that first moment. I organized this event to continue to have conversation not only about the book, but about the many themes within it which feel so pertinent today: immigration, queer belonging, diaspora “wars,” and most importantly to me, how we can continue to be responsible to one another when the world around us feels like it’s falling apart. This event is extra special because I’ll be in conversation the with amazing comedian Aida Rodriguez. If you know me irl you know I suck at asking for support lol. But I’m trying to get over my own shame to say a true thing: I need my people. It would mean a lot to me if you came to this event :) and if you’re far away and can’t come, pls consider supporting Loca in other ways. The best way to support, as always, is to buy the book. If you read it, tell a friend or write a review on goodreads. Every action, large and small, helps to get the book into the hands of folks who the book might be of service to. RSVP LINK IN BIO 🌟

I wanted to write something coherent for Hispanic heritage month. About what propelled me to start writing Loca: among many desires, the need to see people who are so central to New York (Dominicans, immigrants, etc.) written about with the sacred grace I feel they deserve. But how to have a coherent thought in these fractured times. It seems the only thing left to do is keep in mind what one attends to. Silly to say, maybe: the other day I read a short story, and that made me feel there is still mystery in the world. Not every person is a checked off box or an online avatar. People are people. That made me feel alive. It made me feel that maybe the commodification of thought by our political system is not yet complete. There is social media frying our brains, yes. But, as remedy, there is also art. I am searching to feel there is a hand to grasp on the other side of all this fear and violence. I don’t call that *hope.* I call it thinking. Considering that Latinos, like everyone, are being systematically dehumanized, I hope this month you’ll spend some quiet time with our stories and our art, not in the way capitalism demands that we package our lives for easy consumption, but in the way only art can make a life, a community, a people, feel sacred. Sharing some photos of my summer just to feel alive a little. ☀️

Diversifying the literary canon but avoiding tokenization—it's a process. See authors @aleherex (LOCA) and @emergencychampagne (MAGGIE; OR, A MAN AND A WOMAN WALK INTO A BAR) discuss their debut author experience in the latest episode of The Write Reasons, at the link in bio.