We’re thrilled to announce Afterlife, the new novel by beloved writer Julia Alvarez. Julia has written multiple bestselling novels including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, which has sold over one million copies worldwide and just celebrated its 25^th anniversary this year.

Afterlife, the first new adult novel in almost fifteen years from one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful Latinx writers of her generation, is a luminous look inside the mind of a literature professor, an immigrant, trying to rediscover who she is after the sudden death of her husband. When an undocumented migrant girl appears on her doorstep and the professor’s wildly erratic sister disappears, she is forced to ask, What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including, maybe especially, members of our human family? The novel is scheduled to be published in April 2020 (order your copy here).

“Afterlife is in many ways about what happens when a woman who has always sought direction in the literature she has taught, loved, written finds that the world demands more of her than words,” Julia says. “I’m deeply gratified that the book’s publication allows me to continue my long and happy relationship with Algonquin.”

Julia’s editor, Amy Gash, adds, “Algonquin has been Julia’s publishing home since 1991 when we published her debut, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, and so we are incredibly proud and excited to be bringing out Afterlife. In this book, as in all Julia’s work, the individual lives she creates reveal how culture and politics impact ordinary people.”

Julia left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including the 2013 National Medal of Arts (pictured above), a Latina Leader Award in Literature in 2007 from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the 2002 Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the 2000 Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s 1996 program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, From John Donne to Julia Alvarez.”

She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America, most recently as a writer‑in‑residence at Middlebury College, until her retirement in 2016. She is a co‑founder and convener of Border of Lights, a collective of activists committed to promoting peace and solidarity between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In 2009, In the Time of the Butterflies was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program and, in 2013, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts (pictured above).