Author Talk: Cleyvis Natera with Dionne Ford

Join us to celebrate the paperback release of Cleyvis Natera's novel The Grand Paloma Resort. The author will be in conversation with writer Dionne Ford, author of Go Back and Get It. Books will be available for purchase.

The Grand Paloma Resort: Laura is a local Dominican woman who, through sheer hard work, has risen through the ranks to become manager at the Grand Paloma Resort. Her idea to pair a “platinum” guest with their own resort employee to attend to their every whim has been wildly successful, and she’s just weeks away from a promotion that could blaze a path for her off the resort and toward a life of opportunity. If only her younger sister, Elena—who she’s looked after since the death of their mother—could get with the program.

Elena has tried to live up to her sister’s expectations, but to escape the drudgery of waiting on rich tourists, she’s become increasingly dependent on pills and partying. As a babysitter at the resort, she’s at the beck and call of guests who are indulging their worst impulses and need someone else to watch their kids while they do so. Now, after an accident, a child left in her charge is believed dead, and Elena knows she’ll be held responsible.

When Elena runs into the child’s father at a nearby beachfront watering hole, he offers her an obscene amount of money for private time with two young local girls. Elena pockets the cash to fund her escape and prays she’s gotten the girls out of harm’s way. But then the girls are reported missing.

Set over the course of seven days, The Grand Paloma Resort offers an unforgettable story of class, family, and community, building to an intense climax in which the true costs of luxury are laid bare, redeemed only by true acts of love.

Cleyvis Natera is an award-winning author, essayist, and critic. Her debut novel, Neruda on the Park, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and winner of a Silver Medal by the International Latino Book Awards for Best First Book of Fiction. Her sophomore novel, The Grand Paloma Resort, was named a best book of 2025 by ELLE, Electric Literature, and CrimeReads. Her other writing has appeared in the Modern Love column in The New York Times, bon appetit, Kirkus, The New York Times Book Review, TIME, The Washington Post, USA TODAY, Pleiades, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix) and Kweli Journal, among others. Natera has received awards, fellowships and artist residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, PEN America, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Hermitage Artist Retreat, among others. She was the recipient of the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 2024 Toni Morrison Fiction Fellowship. She is currently a Fulbright Specialist. She joined Montclair State University in the fall of 2024 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing where she currently leads the development of an M.F.A. in Bilingual Creative Writing Program. Natera is also part of the creative writing faculty at Barnard College of Columbia University and The New School M.F.A. program.

NEA creative writing fellow Dionne Ford is author of the memoir Go Back and Get It, a 2024 finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and an NPR book of the day. Her work has won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, the Newswomen’s Club of NY and the New Jersey State Council of the Arts and has appeared in The New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, LitHub, The Boston Globe, and Ebony among other publications. She co-edited the anthology Slavery’s Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation and served on the NJ Reparations Council. She holds an MFA in creative writing from NYU and teaches creative writing at Fordham University and Drew University.