I won't tell you that it's gonna be okay.

I won't tell you that it's going to be okay.

Welcome to another episode of the Book Arts Podcast.

We've been trying to make this work for a minute because I actually have a lot of mutual friends with one of the most brilliant writers we have on the scene today and I'm

going to make sure that I pronounce her name correctly with the role in the accent as I should but

Piola.

Piola, yeahiola. Piola.

Close.

Close.

Piola Ramos.

How are you today?

What's going on?

I'm well, you know.

I'm excited about finally getting this book out.

And it coincides at a time when I think there's just so many real questions and uncertainties around the Latino voting block and so it's

time, it all sort of play out in real time. No, it's timely. Your book is timely in Evergreen and we would get to it, but, you know, a lot of people always ask the question, like, how did such and such or whatever guess you have on today how did they get to where they are and talk to me about the arc of your career and what brought you to the point of your new book defectors?

Yeah, so I grew up around a family of journalists my mom is a Cuban exile my my father's

Mexican immigrant both of them met in Miami but um both of them you know big big journalists and but I was very much

attracted to Barack Obama's message in 2008 right so straight out of college and I joined, you know, his campaign straight after I graduated, I moved to DC.

I started as a young intern and then sort of stayed in politics for as long as I could.

I was in the Obama days and did the Chicago thing

and during the 2012 re-election campaign

...