Join us at First Light for an evening with Keila Vall de la Ville, celebrating her novel Minerva, a story of family, exile, and the fragile distance between safety and home. A reception with the author will take place from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, followed by the conversation at 6:30 PM and a signing to close the evening.

At its center is a young girl raised in a family that does not fit neatly into the world around her. The only child of a queer, multi-partnered household, Minerva grows up in a country shaped by political tension and control, where private life and public reality rarely align. When a sudden threat forces her to leave for New York, what follows is not just a journey, but a quiet reckoning with distance, belonging, and what it means to hold on to the people you love.

The novel moves between places and emotional states with a sense of urgency and reflection. As Minerva navigates isolation abroad and the escalating danger back home, the story turns toward a simple but difficult realization: what matters most is not always what can be protected.

She will be joined by Alejandro Puyana for a conversation on writing across borders, the relationship between personal and political life, and the ways fiction can hold both upheaval and tenderness at once.

About the Author

Keila Vall de la Ville is a Venezuelan writer based in New York whose work moves between languages, places, and emotional landscapes. Her novel Los días animales received the International Latino Book Award and was later translated into English as The Animal Days.

In addition to her novels, she is the author of award-winning collections of short stories and poetry, including Ana no duerme, Enero es el mes más largo, and the poetry collections Viaje legado and Perseo en si bemol. Across these works, her writing moves fluidly between forms, returning to questions of language, displacement, and the shifting boundaries of identity.​

About the Conversation Partner

Alejandro Puyana is a Venezuelan writer based in Austin whose work explores the emotional and political realities of life across borders. He earned his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, and his fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, and The American Scholar, with work selected for Best American Short Stories.

His debut novel, Freedom Is a Feast, draws on the history and contradictions of Venezuela, shaped in part by his own experience navigating distance from home.

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