In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we are celebrating the wonderful and prolific writer Zoraida Córdova. She moved from Ecuador to the United States at a young age and now resides in NYC. Now 35, Córdova began writing as a teenager and has published an impressive number of books in that time both under her own name and the pen-name Zoey Castile. Córdova is best known for her ‘Brooklyn Brujas‘ series, which tracks three Hispanic-American sisters living in Brooklyn and mingles the typical coming-of-age YA hallmarks with fantasy realms and creatures, Bruja culture, and more. Her most recent book, The Inheritance Of Orquídea Divina, was published in 2021 and praised for its melodic prose.

We came across this great interview Córdova did with Tiffany Gonzalez, published on Latinos in Publishing. Check it out to learn more about Córdova’s life and work!

TG: To draw from the previous question, this story has been resonating with so many who are seeing themselves and their experiences through the Montoyas, how does that make you feel, and will you continue to connect with readers, who don’t necessarily see themselves in mainstream stories, through your writing?

ZC: It’s the most incredible feeling, really. I mean, my debut novel, The Vicious Deep, had side characters that were part Ecuadorian. Because of previous rejections I thought that’s all I could sneak into a book, the way you sneak veggies into a little kid’s meal. But then I wrote the Brooklyn Brujas which is my love letter to the urban fantasy I read as a teen and follows three sister Brujas. I wrote romance novels with Latina protagonists. Middle grade with Ecuadorian families. So, yes, I got over my fear and I’ve been writing this ever since. Maybe readers are finding me now because Atria has done an incredible job at making me visible, but I’ve been here for almost a decade, and will continue to write the stories I love.