Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a New York-based author who grew up in Boston and calls herself a “Guatelombian” writer—half Guatemalan, half Colombian. We had a lively conversation about her second novel, Candelaria—an intergenerational family drama set during the apocalypse. Lozada-Oliva’s book explores the fraught but loving relationships between three sisters, their mother, their grandmother, and their connections, both real and imagined, with their Guatemalan homeland. It offers deep insights into Latina/o/x/e family dynamics, and is laugh-out-loud funny. Candelaria and Lozada-Oliva’s first novel, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse, were both published by Astra House. A former slam poetry performer, she has also written a collection of poems called Peluda. Look out for Candelaria’s paperback publicationthis fall.