What: Meet the Author! Stephanie Elizondo-Griest presents excerpts from Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana
Where: Central Library · 600 Soledad, 1st Floor Auditorium
When: Thursday, April 14, 2005 · 7:00 p.m.

Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana

• Named a "Best Book of 2004" by the San Francisco Chronicle
• Featured in the New York Times Book Review recommended summer reading section, June 6, 2004
• Named Texas Monthly "Book of the Month" for March 2004

As a high-school senior looking for a way to escape South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest heard a CNN correspondent offer some how-to-be-like-me advice: "Learn Russian." Though she barely knew enough of her mother's native Spanish to communicate with her abuelita, Stephanie enrolled in Russian at the University of Texas, a step that ultimately led to a four-year, 12-nation tour of the former Communist Bloc. Between 1996 and 2000 she visited Russia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, China, Viet Nam, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and Cuba.

During her wanderings, Stephanie worked as a volunteer at a children's shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher for a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She fell in love with an ex-soldier who avoided radiation clean-up duties at Chernobyl by slitting his wrists, fought to feature the Spice Girls in print, hung out with Cuban hip-hop artists rapping about Revolution, and experienced some difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy. In Around the Bloc, Stephanie offers her reflections on these experiences and more (such as how to buy vodka for a Russian dinner party: “one bottle per guest plus one.”)

On Thursday, April 14, at 7:00 p.m. at the Central Library, 600 Soledad, Stephanie will share her excerpts from her book and discuss the effects her travels have had on her life. The program is free and open to the public. One hour of free parking is available in the Central Library parking garage with a validated ticket. For more information, the public may call 207-2500.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Latina Magazine, the Associated Press, USA Weekend, and numerous travel anthologies.