We caught up with the brilliant and insightful David Bowles a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

David, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

To some degree, all creativity involves risk. But when a person from an under-represented community or intersection of them (as in Mexican American and queer) choses to center that background and identity in their work, they open themself to criticism and rejection. In my own case, because I insisted on including Spanish, on not shoe-horning white characters into my narratives, on telling stories that arose from Mesoamerican traditions with complex names in Nahuatl, Mayan, and other Indigenous Mexican languages, many of my projects were rejected by dozens of agents and multiple publishers. The book that was most rejected, THE SMOKING MIRROR, went on to win an award from the American Library Association. I believed in that project and didn’t back down even in the face of a chorus of voices telling me that readers wouldn’t receive it well. Now it’s in the curriculum of NYC and Chicago middle schools.

Similarly, after I had gained a modicum of fame, I didn’t hesitate to be an activist fighting for greater Latinx representation in publishing, co-founding #DignidadLiteraria and confronting the Big Five even though doing so put my entire career at risk. Some issues are just too important not to speak out about.

David, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m an author and translator from south Texas, an area known as the Río Grande Valley, four counties right on the border with Mexico. My family has lived here for many generations (on my dad’s side for a couple of centuries).

I grew up in a Mexican American family — led by my paternal grandfather, Manuel Garza, and my grandmother Marie (a redheaded woman of Irish extraction who had taken to Mexican culture like a fish to water in her early 20s). It was Marie’s second marriage — she’d left the man who’d wedded her at 16 and come to South Texas, only fall in love with Manny. They married on the sly in Mexico two years after my father’s out-of-wedlock birth. They had three more children—my aunt Linda Garza and uncles Michael and Daniel — establishing a relatively happy border clan.

But their cuentos … oh, such dark and twisted tales! A blend of Southern Gothic and Colonial Mexican emerged from Marie’s powerful imagination, and all her children grew up to be storytellers as well. When I was a little kid, all those spooky folklore captured my mind and heart. I wanted more. My grandmother Garza — Mimi, we called her — eventually tired of my constant pleading. “Learn to read, boy,” she said at last. “Books have tons of stories. And there are thousands waiting for you on the library shelves.”

So I bugged my mom to teach me to read. She did, and by the time I was 5 years old, I was devouring books. Not many years later, I realized that this was what I wanted: to take my family’s stories and turn them into books. To evolve from storyteller to author. Along the way, I did well in school and became the first in the family to attend college, becoming a middle- and high-school English teacher and ultimately getting my doctorate. Now I teach at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. And I’ve fulfilled my childhood dream: I’ve written some thirty award-winning titles, most notably THEY CALL ME GÜERO and MY TWO BORDER TOWNS.

My work has also been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, School Library Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. I’ve also worked on several TV/film projects, including Victor and Valentino (Cartoon Network), the [COVID-cancelled] Moctezuma & Cortés miniseries (Amazon/Amblin) and Monsters and Mysteries in America (Discovery).

At the center of all my work stands Mexican Americans from the borderlands, their roots in Mexico, and Mexico’s origins in the Indigenous cultures of pre-Invasion Mesoamerica. As a result, I often find myself breaking new ground and mentoring up-and-coming Mexican American writers. It’s my responsibility to trailblaze and use any power or position I garner to create new venues for the voices of my community.

In 2017, I was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. I now serves as its vice president, working to ensure that it reflects the true demographics of this state and its literary community. In 2019, I co-founded the hashtag and activist movement #DignidadLiteraria, which has negotiated greater Latinx representation in publishing. In 2021, I helped launch Chispa, the Latinx imprint of Scout Comics, for which I serve as co-publisher. In the upcoming years, we will be putting the amazing words and art of many Latinx writers in the hands of eager readers.

David’s literary representation is Taylor Martindale Kean and Stefanie Von Borstel of Full Circle Literary. His Hollywood representation is Sandra Ávila of Inclusion Management. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @DavidOBowles

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I discovered that the secret isn’t to promote YOURSELF, but the IDEAS and KNOWLEDGE that are finding their way into your work. So, since I’ve been studying pre-Invasion Mesoamerica and its languages for decades now, rather than spend my time crowing about my next book and begging people to acquire my titles, I have created posts and threads gifting understanding to my followers and others, often cool information about the Nahuatl language and Mexica [Aztec] culture. THAT kind of generosity of content has drawn tens of thousands of people to my social media accounts. While there’s no guarantee that they then purchase my work, it’s clear that when I finally DO make those occasional announcements about upcoming books, many more eyes see them than would otherwise be the case.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think it’s important not to let the big, homogenous media outlets and popularity alone dictate what you consume in terms of creative content. Instead, take stock of whose voices get elided from that national conversation—BIPOC, queer, disabled, etc.—and make a concerted effort to follow people from those communities who create art. Purchase their stuff from Indie publishers, etc. Review their work on Amazon and Goodreads. Share your enjoyment of their work on social media. Show the rest of the world that those voices matter to you.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://davidbowles.us
• Instagram: @DavidOBowles
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.oscar.bowles/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bowles-42150221/
• Twitter: @DavidOBowles
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidBowles