Chicana Noir at Arvida Book Co.

Margaret Elysia Garcia hosts reading and book signing at Arvida Book Co. in Tustin!

Arvida Book Co. in Tustin

115 W Main St

Tustin, CA 92780

2 - 3:30 pm

About the book

"In Chicana Noir and Other Stories, the real horror isn't supernatural—it's adjuncting without health insurance. From the fever dream of "Chicana Noir Story # 1" to the revenge fantasy of "The Last Cruise," Margaret Elysia Garcia writes with the urgency of someone who knows that survival itself is resistance. Garcia's narrators exist in the margins: too educated for some spaces, not "authentic" enough for others, navigating a world where the supernatural feels way more believable than the American Dream. A demon sits on your chest in your dead brother's room. Your grandmother practices witchcraft to protect the family. A serial killer terrorizes the city while three teenage girls form a blood pact. From "Come and Play" to "The Last Cruise," these stories pulse with the rhythm of Whittier Boulevard, the Smiths on repeat, and the complicated inheritance of being a Chicana-in-Doc-Martens in a country that wants you invisible. Garcia has created something rare: a collection that's both deeply personal and politically urgent, where punk feminism meets magical realism and neither apologizes for taking up the space."

–Ariel Gore, author of We Were Witches, The Wayward Writer, and Rehearsals for Dying

About the author

Macondo fellow Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of the poetry collection the daughterland (El Martillo Press, 2023), the short story collections Chicana Noir and Other Stories (El Martillo Press, 2026) and Graft (Tolsun Books, 2022), and the poetry chapbooks Your House is on Fire (Daxson Publishing, 2026), Iconistas!, and Burn Scars, (Lit Kit Collective, 2025, 2022). She’s the co-editor of the Golden Poppy Award finalist in non-fiction anthology Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country (AK Press, 2025). She’s the winner of the James L. Doti Outstanding Graduate Student Award from Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

El Martillo Press

El Martillo Press publishes writers whose pens strike the page with clear intent; words with purpose to pry apart assumed norms and to hammer away at injustice. El Martillo Press proactively publishes writers looking to pound the pavement to promote their work and the work of their fellow pressmates. El Martillo is the builder of bridges and the destroyer of walls.