María Amparo Escandón
New York Times Best-Selling Bilingual Author


María Amparo Escandón is a New York Times best-selling bilingual author (English and Spanish.) Her novel, L.A. Weather (Flatiron Books) is a Reese’s Book Club pick and is featured on Oprah Quarterly as well as a Best Book of the Month in Barnes & Noble, Alta, People, PopSugar, Bustle, CNN, E! News, Ms. Magazine, Nylon, GMA, and more. She won the Fiction Award at the International Latino Book Awards in 2022.

 

María wrote the screenplay for the film Santitos, produced by John Sayles, receiving awards in 14 international Film Festivals, such as the Latin Cinema Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Special Jury Award at the Rencontres Cinémas de Toulouse, France.

 

She founded The Other Truth Productions, a content production company, with a pipeline of projects in development, like the television mini-series, Mudflap Girl, based on her second novel, González & Daughter Trucking Co. and a TV series based on her third novel, L.A. Weather.

 

María Amparo Escandón has taught Creative Writing workshops at UCLA Extension since 1994. She has been an advisor at the Sundance Film Institute Screenwriters Labs in Mexico and Brazil. Since 2000, she has served as a mentor for the PEN Center Emerging Voices Program. Additionally, she mentors for LitUp, Reese Witherspoon’s fellowship for empowering unpublished, underrepresented women writers.

 

María is invited regularly as keynote speaker and panelist at universities, writing conferences, seminars, film festivals, book expos, fundraisers and prisons. María has been an L.A. resident for forty years.

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Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants a little rain. L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and he’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage.

Their three daughters—Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers—are left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.

With quick wit and humor, María Amparo Escandón follows the Alvarado family as they wrestle with impending evacuations, secrets, deception, and betrayal, and their toughest decision yet: whether to stick together or burn it all down.
Climate Change in the Media: A Personal Story Most TV shows, movies and books ignore climate change. How can stories in books, movies and TV shows address the sense of helplessness one feels when faced with weather events that cause so much destruction and that, in many ways, are of humankind’s making? Solastalgia—a term that describes people’s sadness at the fatal effects of global warming—is one way to convey what it feels like at a personal level to suffer the effects of climate change. Is climate change depicted enough in the entertainment media? How intimately do we relate to news stories? What’s the most effective vehicle to deliver the message that the news can only express in generic terms? L.A. Weather is a melodrama with climate change as a central theme in which the characters have to deal with it as their family connection unravels.
Latinas are driving our economy. Why are successful Latinas absent in books, films and TV series? The demo that is driving our economy are Latinas. They’re the ones launching more companies than any other demographic in the U.S. We never read stories about successful Latinas, chefs, architects, social media mavens (like the characters in L.A. Weather). Many incredible chefs, architects, who are Latinas can’t get a loan. Lenders don’t see them as entrepreneurs. That’s why writing and talking about characters like these is so powerful.

A Conversation with María by Gina Becker

L.A. Weather is a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times • Real Simple • Library Journal • Harper’s Bazaar

L.A. Weather is a A BEST BOOK OF SEPTEMBER: PopSugar • Barnes & Noble • Bustle • CNN • E! News • Ms. Magazine • Nylon • GMA (and more!)

L.A. Weather is an  INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • 2022 INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR FICTION

Read an excerpt of L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón in L.A. Weekly.

María Amparo Escandón for the Los Angeles Times on her new novel L.A. Weather.

Yxta Maya Murray at Los Angeles Review of Books reviews María Amparo Escandón’s L.A. Weather. 

Read a review of María Amparo Escandón’s L.A. Weather  in the New York Times.

Coverage of María Amparo Escandón’s first novel Esperanza’s Box of Saints appears in the New York Times. 

Praise for L.A. Weather “This story beautifully weaves together the theme of family and uses weather as a metaphor to peel back the curtain on the layered lives of three sisters and their parents.” There’s a 100% chance you’ll be paging through this book to uncover the secrets and deception that could potentially burn everything down!”
— Reese Witherspoon

“In her most ambitious, personal and mature work, María Amparo Escandón recounts a single year in the life of an extended family in Los Angeles -- a year that includes a near-drowning, an estrangement, a brain tumor, three divorces, an embryo theft, a wildfire evacuation, and the loss of property. It’s also intimately about the city itself, and we Angelenos will recognize ourselves both in the setting and the dizzying events and emotions that so often erupt here. Funny, moving and relatable, L.A. Weather is at once sprawling and fragile, a wonderful read -- one I couldn’t put down.”
— Alexander Payne, screenwriter, director of The Holdovers, Sideways, Election

“This is by far one of the most endearing L.A. novels in recent memory.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A lively and ambitious family novel."
—New York Times Book Review

“Enchanting.”
—Oprah Quarterly

“Warm, witty, and funny, this novel makes the perfect, curl-up-on-the-couch long weekend read.”
—Amazon Book Review (Editors’ Pick)

“A heartfelt, laugh-out-loud novel about the highs and lows of family life.”
—Real Simple

"A warmhearted domestic drama with political undercurrents makes for fun reading."
—Kirkus

"Absorbing, moving, comic and tragic, L.A. Weather will capture readers and never let them go."
—Shelf Awareness

"A year in the life of a Mexican Jewish family whose problems include a near-drowning, a drought and drama galore as the marriages of the parents and all three daughters go off the rails."
—People

"Escandón folds weighty issues—immigration, climate change, gentrification—into a lively, slyly humorous family story."
—Library Journal

“María Amparo Escandón captures brilliantly the sights, sounds, and scents of the metropolis—each enclave with its own language, music, foods, and customs.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books