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Podcast #058

For my fifty-eighth Dream Gardens kid lit podcast, I interviewed author Padma Venkatraman about the verse memoirs Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings and Soaring Earth by Margarita Engle.

Enchanted Air was published in 2015, followed by Soaring Earth in 2019.  Each details  Margarita’s experience immigrating to the US after the Cuban revolution of the 1960’s. In the first book we meet Margarita as a child, torn between her love of the Cuba she longs to return to and her struggle to find her place in a country that doesn’t always welcome her with open arms. In the second book we meet up with Margarita again as a young adult as she travels from California to New York in a journey to figure out where she belongs and what she has to offer the world. Told entirely in free verse, Margarita’s story is lyrical and personal, a story that is both unique and universal in her quest to find a place to call home.

Padma Venkatraman is author of  the novels Climbing the Stairs, Island’s End, A Time to Dance, and the 2019 middle grade novel The Bridge Home. You can find Padma’s website at padmavenkatraman.com.

All podcasts are available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Please link, share, comment, or subscribe. And if you are interested in participating in the Dream Gardens podcast, send me a request through my contact page.

My next podcast will be with author Kathi Appelt, talking about The Grand Plan To Fix Everything by Uma Krishnaswami . It will be published on August 19th.