DIG
Robert Paul Moreira
DIG
Price: $18.00 pbk. Fiction, Short stories, Drama Size: 6x9; 185 p. ISBN: 9781642510416 Read an interview with the author in THE MUSEUM OF AMERICANA: A LITERARY REVIEW
Read an excerpt from DIG featured in
Lone Star Literary Life! 
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This cross-genre collection of short stories, microfiction, and drama provides a kaleidoscope of modern human experience—from navigating fraught romantic relationships and definitions of masculinity, to dealing with the pull of family ties and the struggle to make one's way in the world. Inspired by authors as diverse as Robert Graves, Leslie Marmon Silko, and playwright Luis Valdez, DIG is a bruised bricolage in four acts—UTERO, VIVO, SITU, and VITRO—that interrogates the imprisoned body, braves its way through southern cartographies, and ultimately urges readers to venture beyond the confines of history, trauma, language, place, and genre.
Featuring Latinx characters who are often caught between cultures, DIG explores themes of physical and emotional violence, human relationships, and the weight of politics, history, and culture on individuality and identity. Pathos and humor mix with frustration, revulsion, and dread to create an emotional rollercoaster that ultimately lands on a celebration of human resilience and perseverance. "This concise manner of storytelling mixes modern individual culture with mythological and literary references in such a way that nearly raises a middle finger to the occasional snobbery of contemporary literary fiction and sets Dig apart from the very first."--HIVE Indie Book Review
"Dig is a gritty literary collection whose diverse entries concern finding one’s place within a family, a culture, and a country."--Foreword Reviews 4 out of 5 Stars |
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Purchase for $5.99 ISBN: 9781642510423 "Characters under duress are the most exciting to read and write about."
"I wanted to stretch the boundaries of what a traditional book could accomplish by showcasing the two genres I write in." -Robert Paul Moreira |
About the Author
Robert Paul Moreira earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Texas Pan American, and his Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the editor of ¡Arriba Baseball!: A Collection of Latina/o Baseball Fiction (2013) and author of the story collection Scores, winner of the 2016 NACCS Tejas FOCO Fiction Award. His work has appeared in Southwest American Literature, Aethlon, Azahares, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Cobalt Review, and the anthologies SOL: English Writing from Mexico, Along the River 2, and New Border Writing. Malinalli, a musical in collaboration with Josiah Esquivel, is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press. Robert is a lecturer in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, where he has taught courses in fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, and Mexican American studies.
Robert Paul Moreira earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Texas Pan American, and his Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the editor of ¡Arriba Baseball!: A Collection of Latina/o Baseball Fiction (2013) and author of the story collection Scores, winner of the 2016 NACCS Tejas FOCO Fiction Award. His work has appeared in Southwest American Literature, Aethlon, Azahares, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Cobalt Review, and the anthologies SOL: English Writing from Mexico, Along the River 2, and New Border Writing. Malinalli, a musical in collaboration with Josiah Esquivel, is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press. Robert is a lecturer in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, where he has taught courses in fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, and Mexican American studies.
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What Advance Readers Are Saying:
DIG is a wonderfully impressive collection of short stories, flash fiction and plays. Tough, gritty, and yet tender at its heart, this book beautifully captures the personal hardships, struggles and small victories in the lives of characters seldom written about in contemporary literature, let alone rendered with such empathy, care and insight. Moreira gives voice to those rarely afforded one, and as for the author himself, his voice, as a writer, is one of the most true and original I’ve read in years. This is a fine and special work. --James Brown, author of The Los Angeles Diaries and Apology to the Young Addict I relished DIG. A timeless collection of stories and plays that is also a piece of today. DIG is a fantastic read--moving and comic and tragic, and infused with earned hope. Moreira’s memorable and recognizable characters grapple with issues that resonate across cultures and generations. Life is tough, and the characters, of different backgrounds, ages and sensibilities, meet it fully. This is a voice that needs to be heard. Robert Paul Moreira is at the forefront of Latinx writers, a fresh American voice. Dig it. --Stephen D. Gutierrez, winner of the 2010 American Book Award |
In this hybrid collection--fiction and drama--Moreira offers a feast, a smorgasbord that will have readers smiling, laughing out loud, crying, and most of all thinking. The well-polished prose flows swiftly; the voices of memorable characters rise and insist on being heard. The reality of lives lived on the edge and on borders hits the reader head on with vibrant precision. --Norma Elia Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera Robert Paul Moreira is the most original voice coming from our nation’s southern border. While many impotent minds can only see violence, drug money, and greed at our society’s intersections, Moreira is awake, attuned, alive and a genius at telling truth. Let the diplomats’ lying children die. This is the dirt of real souls dug up and tilled for you. Eat it with your soul and grow. And don’t forget to thank Moreira for wiping the mud from your mind. --Brian Allen Carr, author of Sip and Opioid, Indiana In DIG, Robert Paul Moreira composes a collection of crucial stories across genres and form. Moreira's singular depictions of these characters, their families, their voices are a true, wild and brave ballad to the unrepresented among us. This is beautiful work. --Wally Rudolph, author of Mighty, Mighty and Four Corners |