Before then, I didn’t understand how anyone could bear to live someplace without a lake or an ocean. My first year had been rather brutal, so I thought the award was bad news: Oh, I gotta stay in Austin and live on a ranch for six months! But I did it and it changed my whole attitude about Texas. But instead of responding with a “Yay!,” I said flatly, “Oh.” Because I didn’t have a car and was going to have to buy one. I was wrapping a vase with newspaper, I remember, when they called and gave me the good news. SC: I won the Dobie Paisano Fellowship as I was packing to leave Texas, thinking I would never come back again. LILIANA VALENZUELA: We go back bastante, to the ’80s, maybe ’87, after your stay at the Paisano ranch? SANDRA CISNEROS: Lili, how long have we known each other? This conversation was co-organized by The Believer and the 2018 Texas Book Festival, and occasioned by the publication of Sandra Cisneros and Liliana Valenzuela’s Puro Amor (Sarabande Books), a bilingual chapbook illustrated by Cisneros.
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