About this Event
Four budding bruja BFFs face off against an anti-magic regime in this witchy, weird-girl YA dystopia
Tombolo Books is thrilled to host the launch event for Gloria Muñoz's second YA novel, They Called Us Wicked! Muñoz along with fellow local authors Tyler Gillespie, Maria Ingrande Mora, E.G. Young will be in converation about the book, writing, and all things witchy!
They Called Us Wicked is equal parts a coming-of-age friendship story and supernatural dystopia. This dazzling novel finds resistance to oppression in the extraordinary and the ordinary, from magic and spellcraft to friendship, heritage, and love.
They're a coven of four: Lucy, who can hear a whisper in a crowded room. Clara, who can read your innermost thoughts. Fabiola, who can see the future. And Sirena, who can manipulate your every emotion. They've been best friends since they met on the astral plane as kids, each of them hiding their gifts from a world that insists magic and witchcraft are a threat to humanity.
But they've never met in the real world. . .until now.
As a new student at the prestigious Fletcher University, Lucy is looking forward to a perfect freshman year full of in-person coven hangs and covert witchy fun. But something is off with Lucy's roommate, Retta, almost like she might have latent magic powers she's unaware of (not possible...right?). So, when Retta disappears, Lucy knows it's up to her and her coven to investigate—that is, if they can make time for occult recon amid college classes, flirty crushes, and friendship group growing pains.
As the search for Retta leads to an enchanted forest hidden under Fletcher's campus, Lucy uncovers a chilling truth: maybe Fletcher is just another arm of the anti-magic regime. But are supernatural powers and ride-or-die friends enough to take down an oppressive authority that thinks you shouldn't exist?
Gloria Muñoz is the author of the poetry collections Your Biome Has Found You and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Florida Gold Medal Book Award for Poetry. She is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow, a Hedgebrook Fellow, a Macondista, a Highlights Foundation Diverse Verse Fellow, and a part of Las Musas. Her debut novel, This Is the Year, was hailed as “brilliantly layered” by Booklist in a starred review. Visit her online at gloriamunoz.com and on Instagram at @bygloriamunoz.
Tyler Gillespie is a writer, independent greeting card maker, and the palest Floridian you'll ever meet. He’s an award-winning journalist and the author of The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021) and two poetry collections — the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023) and Florida Man: Poems, Revisited (Burrow Press, 2024). He’s the co-editor of The Awkward Phase (Skyhorse, 2016), and his humor writing can be found in the New Yorker, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and LGBTQ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny.
His reporting appears in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, GQ, VICE, The Daily Beast, Playboy, and other outlets. Gillespie is a fifth-generation Floridian and wrote the introduction for A24’s Florida! A Hyper-Local Guide to the Flora, Fauna, and Fantasy of the Most Far-out State in America.
He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans and a PhD in English: Writing, Rhetoric, & Technical Communication from the University of Memphis. In 2021, he won the X. A. Kramer, Jr. Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Mississippi. Gillespie teaches at Ringling College of Art and Design, where he is currently the Writing Program Coordinator.
Maria Ingrande Mora (they/she) is the acclaimed author of Fragile Remedy, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, the Ranger Academy series, and The Immeasurable Depth of You, an Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award finalist, which earned three starred reviews, with Kirkus Reviews calling it “raw and compassionate.” A queer, AuDHD single parent, Mora lives in Florida with their two teenagers and three cats. Instagram: @MariaMoraWrites.
E.G. Young is a speculative fiction author living on the Gulf Coast of Florida. In her books, you’ll find weird-but-tender vibes, strange girls, dark humor, spookiness, and animals who all live at the end (promise!). She writes 90 percent of her drafts using voice-to-text dictation (shoutout to fellow hypermobile humans). When she's not writing, you’ll find her enjoying nature, binging Netflix, or playing with her tabby cat and barkless basenji dog. Emily holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from The Vermont College of Fine Arts. Check out her website at egyoungbooks.com.
Event venue & nearby stays
2153 1st Ave S, 2153 1st Avenue South, St. Petersburg, United States
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