San Miguel de Allende
Poetry & Prose Café

Raechel Bratnick :: Phil Gambone :: Lainey Cameron

Café Murmullo, Ancha de San Antonio 24
Covered, Open-Air Venue
*PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE*
Wednesday, January 10, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Suggested Donation: $100 pesos

Poetry & Prose Café Explores Change as Inspiration
by Maia Williams

The 2024 winter season of Poetry and Prose Café will open with three award-winning San Miguel authors offering a mix of memoir and fiction inspired by dramatic changes on *Wednesday, January 10, at Café Murmullo located in Instituto Allende.

Lainey Cameron is an award-winning author, a book marketing expert, a digital nomad, and host of the Best of Women’s Fiction podcast. Her first novel, The Exit Strategy, won fourteen book awards and became an Amazon #1 bestseller in feminist books. It was inspired by a decade of being the only woman in the corporate boardroom, and tells the story of a Silicon Valley investor who first meets her husband’s mistress across the negotiating table. It’s fun feminist fiction that has been called a “rallying call for women to believe in themselves and join together.”

Raechel Bratnick is the author of Awakening the Dreamer and The Likelihood of Dawn: An Intimate Journey Within and Beyond Grief was a finalist in the 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Award. The Likelihood of Dawn is Raechel’s memoir of her husband’s illness and the first two years in the land of grief, emerging into a rich life of aloneness. Following the death of her husband and soul partner, she moved to San Miguel de Allende. After her grandson was born here, she accompanied her daughter to graduate school in Europe. In 2017, she lived in the south of Italy in a medieval hill town, where she stayed until the pandemic hit, escaping four days before Italy closed the country in 2020. She weathered the pandemic in Massachusetts and returned to San Miguel in 2022.

Philip Gambone is the author of five books of fiction and nonfiction. In addition, he has contributed book reviews, profiles, personal essays, and feature pieces to countless journals and anthologies. His work has been praised as “thoughtful, complex and oftentimes exquisite.” His novel Beijing, wrote author Scott Heim, “moves seamlessly between the funny and the utterly heartbreaking.” Phil’s most recent book, As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II, was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the Boston Globe. In addition to teaching high school English for 44 years, Phil taught writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston College, and, for 28 years, at the Harvard Extension School, which twice recognized him with distinguished teaching awards. His new book, entitled Zigzig, is a collection of stories about the lives of older gay men. It will be published this spring.

Admission is free, though we rely on donations to underwrite the costs of graphic design, promotional efforts, venue and sound rentals. We are an all-volunteer organization. We present local and visiting writers, established and emerging. Our reading series typically meets on the second Thursdays, October through March. PLEASE NOTE: January 10 is a Wednesday. Books written by presenters will be available for purchase at our no-commission Café Bookshop.

Please arrive a few minutes early, seating is limited.

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Email attachments: Author Photos and Event Graphic