Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a young Latina superstar novelist and poet whose debut novel recently appeared on a billboard in Times Square. Melissa and Gabe talk about why West Side Story is so relatable for lonely Latinas who obsess over mediocre white guys. Melissa explains why every single woman writer need a big yellow couch. And what happened when Melissa ordered a yellow couch from the internet?

Visit Melissa Lozada-Oliva's website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram

Buy Melissa's book Dreaming of You

Listen to Melissa on Say More

Watch Melissa on YouTube

More episode resources and links

Email Gabe Hudson: [email protected]

Follow Gabe on Twitter and Instagram

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Tressie McMillan Cottom (NYT's columnist)

Merve Emre (contributing writer at The New Yorker)

Charles Yu (National Book Award Winner)

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (NYT's bestselling author of Friday Black)

About the Host:

Gabe Hudson is the author of 2 books published from Knopf. His honors include being named one of Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists,” PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist, the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction from Brown University, a fellowship from Humanities War & Peace Initiative at Columbia University, and Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His writing has appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, The Believer, McSweeney’s, and The New York Times Magazine. He was Editor-at-Large for McSweeney’s for 10+ years. He served in the Marine Corps. He teaches at Columbia University.  

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