I always forget to introduce myself. Hi. I’m Alisa. If you’re new to my writing, this is me: I'm an award-winning former staff writer for the Boston Globe and LA Times, a NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of 16 novels, a bestselling literary Substack essayist, living in New Mexico. I’m almost 57, a single mom, a 14th-generation New Mexican on my mom's side, and a first-generation Cuban American on my dad's. I was born in New Mexico, mostly raised there but also lived in Glasgow, Scotland, as a toddler, when my dad took his first professorship there, and spent 3 years in New Orleans, where his second job took us, before returning to New Mexico. I attended college in Boston, at Berklee College of Music, where I majored in performance, tenor saxophone. I wrote an essay about sexism at Berklee my senior year and the Boston Globe published it. That essay changed school policy and got me invited back 20 years later as an artist in residence, and the school thanked me for making them better. That first essay gave me the journalism bug, and I went to Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I lived away from New Mexico for a total of 15 years as an adult, in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles. I’ve been back in New Mexico for the past 25 years, and intend to stay. I love this place.