The Evanston Public Library invites the community to hear author  Luis Alberto Urrea share his story of transformation from his beginnings on dirt streets in Tijuana to Pulitzer Prize finalist and beloved storyteller. The author of the novel Into the Beautiful North, Urrea will speak at the Evanston Township High School auditorium on Wednesday, March 9, at 7 pm. He will present the keynote talk of Evanston Public Library's "The Big Read" program, a community reading initiative that includes discussions and other events inspired by Into the Beautiful North, at locations throughout Evanston.

Urrea invites us to think of the border as a place of convergence where meaningful conversations, and even love, between cultures begins. Though recognized as a writer who concentrates on the border regions of the Southwestern United States, Urrea says that more than borders, his interest lies in the business of building bridges between cultures.

"[Luis Alberto] Urrea is a kind of literary badass...a master storyteller with a rock and roll heart." —NPR

The author of fourteen books and a creative writing professor at UIC, Urrea won the Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for The Devil’s Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert. He is also the author of historical novels: The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Queen of America.

Urrea, born in a poor neighborhood in Tijuana, inherited a rich legacy of cultural lore and a love of storytelling from his extended family, explored extensively in his writing. When Urrea was five, his parents moved across the border to San Diego. From an early age, he moved easily between the two cultures. In a 2011 interview with the San Diego Reader Urrea said, "To me, Tijuana and San Diego were just inseparable; they were two sides of the same thing."