GrubWrites

"To Write Is An Act Of Love": Luis Alberto Urrea's 2019 Keynote [VIDEO]

To help keep our spirits up and our words flowing, we're sharing Muse and the Marketplace keynote talks and special event videos from GrubStreet's past in a series called "From the Grub Archive." This week, we're sharing a Muse keynote by Luis Alberto Urrea.

"The deep truth of our time,” Muse keynote Luis Alberto Urrea has said, “is that we miss each other.” That prophetic statement has perhaps never been more true than it is now. In his stirring 2019 keynote talk, Urrea, a world-class storyteller, opens his heart and takes us from the road in Tijuana where he grew up through his career as the author of more than seventeen works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Along the way, he talks about mentorship, inspiration, class, how we are all members of the same family, and the sacredness of the everyday details of our lives – details that, perhaps, many of us took for granted until now. “I am and will be Other,” Urrea has said, “until I write you into my heart and make you see my home as what it is – just another extension of your home.” In this talk, he does exactly that.