A Conversation with Best-Selling Author Luis Urrea

“A Conversation with Luis Urrea”

Sunday, October 27
3:00 pm

Hotel Posada de la Aldea

TICKETS

Renowned border writer Luis Urrea returns to SMA to talk about his books, his dual-culture life, and his views on immigration in this special event benefiting Albergue ABBA, the migrant shelter in Celaya.  Urrea is one of the all-time favorite keynote speakers at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference. Pulitzer Prize finalist, best-selling author of 17 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry including The House of Broken Angels and The Devil’s Highway, Urrea is a spell-binding and entertaining speaker who leaves his audiences both laughing and crying.

The Conversation will be followed by an intimate reception at a historic Centro hacienda.

Please join us for this thought-provoking event.  Tickets for the conversation are US$20 ($400 pesos) and US$75 ($1500 pesos) for the reception.  Tickets available at http://latinamericanrelieffund.org.

All proceeds from the event support the work of Albergue ABBA which provides shelter, food, clothing, medical care and legal assistance to migrants transiting through central Mexico, as well as amputees recovering from their injuries.

In fall 2018, Urrea visited Albergue ABBA. So moved was he by the visit, he penned the following in a recent TIME Magazine piece:

“Down in Celaya, halfway through the terrible journey of the refugees, there is a respite center known as Abba House. It is not huge, except in its effect. Sometimes its limited space is crammed with 300 sleeping people. A gentleman whose leg was torn off by the migrant train works there with kids too exhausted to go on. The Mexican pastor who created Abba House cares for anyone who comes, often under great risk from predators. He accepts all guests. The one thing he will not accept is that smell. He knows that the most important thing for a person’s dignity is cleanliness, followed by a safe haven. Doctors helped him determine that it takes three days of rest for these wounded bodies to recharge and carry on. He installed a bank of showers so that every traveler who comes first gets a bath, then clean clothes, and some kind of shoes. He cried when he showed me a couch in a corner where an older man reclined reading a book. “That is what you need to be a human being.””

Please join us for this compelling and thought-provoking conversation followed by an intimate reception with Urrea and 30 people at a beautiful historic Centro home.

Tickets for “A Conversation with Luis Urrea” are $400 pesos (USS$20).
Tickets for the reception – limited to 30 people – are $1500 pesos (US$75)..
All proceeds go to Albergue ABBA and its humanitarian mission.

To purchase tickets: https://latinamericanrelieffund.org/

Rebecca N. Eichler
Board Member, Latin American Relief Fund