A year of weekly interviews (1949-1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Pena disclose Rivera's iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time. These intimate Sunday dialogues with what is surely the most influential Mexican artist of the twentieth century show us the free-flowing mind of a man who was a legend in his own time; an artist who escaped being lynched on more than one occasion, a painter so controversial that his public murals inspired movements, or, like the work commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, were ordered torn down. Here in his San Angelin studio, we hear Rivera's feelings about the elitist aspect of paintings in museums, his motivations to create public art for the people, and his memorable, unedited expositions on the art, culture, and politics of Mexico. The book has seven chapters that loosely follow the range of the author's questions and Rivera's answers. They begin with childlike, yet vast questions on the nature of art, run through Rivera's early memories and aesthetics, his views on popular art, his profound understanding of Mexican art and artists, the economics of art, random expositions on history or dreaming, and elegant analysis of art criticisms and critics. The work is all the more remarkable to have been captured between Rivera's inhumanly long working stints of six hours or even days without stop. In his rich introduction, author Cardona-Pena describes the difficulty of gaining entrance to Rivera's inner sanctum, how government funtionaries and academics often waited hours to be seen, and his delicious victory. At eight p. m. the night of August 12, a slow, heavy-set, parsimonious Diego came in to where I was, speaking his Guanajuato version of English and kissing women's hands. I was able to explain my idea to him and he was immediately interested. He invited me into his studio, and while taking off his jacket, said, "Ask me..." And I asked one, two, twenty... I don't know how many questions 'til the small hours of the night, with him answering from memory, with an incredible accuracy, without pausing, without worrying much about what he might be saying, all of it spilling out in an unconscious and magical manner. A series of Alfredo Cardona-Pena's weekly interviews with Rivera were published in 1949 and 1950 in the Mexican newspaper, El Nacional, for which Alfredo was a journalist. His book of compiled interviews with introduction and preface, El Monstruo en su Laberinto, was published in Spanish in 1965. Finally, this extraordinary and rare exchange has been translated for the first time into English by Alfredo's half-brother Alvaro Cardona Hine, also a poet. According to the translator's wife, Barbara Cardona-Hine, bringing the work into English was a labor of love for Alvaro, the fulfillment of a promise made to his brother in 1971 that he did not get to until the year before his own death in 2016.

A year of weekly interviews (1949-1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Pena disclose Rivera's iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time. These intimate Sunday dialogues with what is surely the most influential Mexican artist of the twentieth century show us the free-flowing mind of a man who was a legend in his own time; an artist who escaped being lynched on more than one occasion, a painter so controversial that his public murals inspired movements, or, like the work commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, were ordered torn down. Here in his San Angelin studio, we hear Rivera's feelings about the elitist aspect of paintings in museums, his motivations to create public art for the people, and his memorable, unedited expositions on the art, culture, and politics of Mexico. The book has seven chapters that loosely follow the range of the author's questions and Rivera's answers. They begin with childlike, yet vast questions on the nature of art, run through Rivera's early memories and aesthetics, his views on popular art, his profound understanding of Mexican art and artists, the economics of art, random expositions on history or dreaming, and elegant analysis of art criticisms and critics. The work is all the more remarkable to have been captured between Rivera's inhumanly long working stints of six hours or even days without stop. In his rich introduction, author Cardona-Pena describes the difficulty of gaining entrance to Rivera's inner sanctum, how government funtionaries and academics often waited hours to be seen, and his delicious victory. At eight p. m. the night of August 12, a slow, heavy-set, parsimonious Diego came in to where I was, speaking his Guanajuato version of English and kissing women's hands. I was able to explain my idea to him and he was immediately interested. He invited me into his studio, and while taking off his jacket, said, "Ask me..." And I asked one, two, twenty... I don't know how many questions 'til the small hours of the night, with him answering from memory, with an incredible accuracy, without pausing, without worrying much about what he might be saying, all of it spilling out in an unconscious and magical manner. A series of Alfredo Cardona-Pena's weekly interviews with Rivera were published in 1949 and 1950 in the Mexican newspaper, El Nacional, for which Alfredo was a journalist. His book of compiled interviews with introduction and preface, El Monstruo en su Laberinto, was published in Spanish in 1965. Finally, this extraordinary and rare exchange has been translated for the first time into English by Alfredo's half-brother Alvaro Cardona Hine, also a poet. According to the translator's wife, Barbara Cardona-Hine, bringing the work into English was a labor of love for Alvaro, the fulfillment of a promise made to his brother in 1971 that he did not get to until the year before his own death in 2016.

Honey in Old Wine Bottles is a collection of short stories written over many years by well-known author Alvaro Cardona-Hine. They vary both in theme and locations, some comic, some serious; some set in the U.S., others in Cardona-Hine's native Costa Rica or other locales. As can be expected by readers familiar with Cardona-Hine's writing, the language entrances with its imagery and accuracy. The stories themselves have appeared in various literary journals over the years. For other books by Cardona-Hine, go to AlbaBooksPress.com.

Memory's Village is a collection of poems that celebrates and contemplates the author's move into a rural traditional village in the mountains of northern New Mexico after spending most of his life in large U.S. cities. As with any of us in the early days of a major relocation, his first impressions are celebratory, accepting, admiring. But after a brief visit of some weeks, he and his wife move in as permanent residents and the more discriminating and critical mind takes over. Filled with humor, praise, at times irritation, the reader gets an inside view of the author's attitudes and judgments as well as the feel of the land, the residents, the life of the every day. Written in the early years of the poet's stay, it is clear that the positive clearly overcame the negatives, since the poet and his wife still live in the village after more than twenty five years.

Phantom Buddha is a portrait of the experiences of a man not quite made for this conventional world, beginning with his dead-end job in an insurance company for nine long years, which the author describes with a wicked humor. Married, with four children, he meets and falls in love with another woman and leaves his family to be with her, finding the freedom to be himself he so yearns for. But, when he introduces his new love to the zen practice that has long interested him, she becomes totally involved, both in the practice and with the Japanese zen master who uses his position to seduce many of his female students. Forced out of the zen center when he expresses his unhappiness with this situation, he sinks into despair and a hopeless pursuit of his beloved. Written in some parts with broad humor, Cardona-Hine also captures the ephemeral beauty of a new love and the depths of despair at its loss. Based on real events, the author intertwines dreams that he had during these years, dreams which reveal to an even greater extent the emotional intensity of his situation as well as the states of mind that sweep through him. Intensely written and felt, the novel shimmers with an authenticity and passion seldom seen in writing today.