Her friend asked, “What are you?” My daughter, who is three-quarters Latina, but shares my skin tone, didn’t know how to respond. The impetus for “Finding Querencia,” though, was inspired by my daughter, then a teen, who had a late-night conversation with a friend while we were living in Richmond, Virginia. Harrison Candelaria Fletcher: Let me start with the title, “Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between.” With its roots in the Spanish verb querer -“to want, to love”-the term querencia has been called untranslatable but has come to mean a place of safety and belonging, that which we yearn for when we yearn for home.Įach week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate? He teaches at Colorado State University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. A native of Albuquerque, he is a former columnist, feature writer and beat reporter at newspapers throughout the West. He also received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, Best American Essays Notable selection, and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award and International Latino Book Award. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, MacDowell Fellowship, Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize, Colorado Book Award and New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. His work has appeared widely in such venues as New Letters, TriQuarterly, Puerto del Sol, and The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. Harrison Candelaria Fletcheris the author of “Descanso for My Father” (2012), “Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams” (2016), and “Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between” (2022).

A phone call cued Harrison Candelaria Fletcher to explore identity Close

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