
In 1994, looking for story ideas, I read a news report about the second annual "Friendshipment" -a humanitarian aid shipment to Cuba sponsored by the ecumenical group Pastors for Peace. Hurricane Andrew had recently hit, and the trade embargo largely prevented Americans from helping families in need. When I explained my situation-starving artist, scraping for stamps for SASEs ... hell, I'd taken the bus to get to the restaurant-Virginia reinterpreted it for me: I had made sacrifices for my art. Before I could act on that good fortune, I received word from another publisher that my short story had been accepted for an anthology by Hispanic authors, to be edited by Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Campoy.