Ink - by Sabrina Vourvoulias (Paperback)

About the Book

"All across the United States, people scramble to survive new, draconian policies that mark and track immigrants and their children (citizens or not) as their freedoms rapidly erode around them. For the "inked," those whose immigration status has been permanently tattooed on their wrists, those famous words on the Statue of Liberty are starting to ring hollow. The tattoos have marked them for horrors they could not have imagined within US borders. As the nightmare unfolds before them, unforeseen alliances between the inked, like Mari, Meche, and Toäno, and non-immigrants, Finn, Del, and Abbie, are formed, all in the desperate hope to confront it."--

Book Synopsis

Her name is Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me." America has lost its way. The strongest of people can be found in the unlikeliest of places. The future of the entire country will depend on them. All across the United States, people scramble to survive new, draconian policies that mark and track immigrants and their children (citizens or not) as their freedoms rapidly erode around them. For the "inked"--those whose immigration status has been permanently tattooed on their wrists--those famous words on the Statue of Liberty are starting to ring hollow. The tattoos have marked them for horrors they could not have imagined within US borders. As the nightmare unfolds before them, unforeseen alliances between the inked--like Mari, Meche, and Toño--and non-immigrants--Finn, Del, and Abbie--are formed, all in the desperate hope to confront it. Ink is the story of their ingenuity. Of their resilience. Of their magic. A story of how the power of love and community out-survives even the grimmest times.

Sabrina Vourvoulias is an award-winning Latina news editor, writer and digital storyteller. An American citizen from birth, she grew up in Guatemala during the armed internal conflict and moved to the United States when she was 15. Her news stories have been published at The Guardian US, Philly.com, Public Radio International's Global Voices, NBC10/Telemundo62, Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia Magazine, City and State PA, and Al Día News, among others. Her short fiction has been published by Tor.com, Strange Horizons and Uncanny, GUD, and Crossed Genres magazines. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and daughter. Read more at www.sabrinavourvoulias.com, and follow her on Twitter @followthelede.

Kathleen Alcalá is an award-winning author of six books of fiction and non-fiction, including Deepest Roots and Spirits of the Ordinary. She received her second Artist Trust Fellowship in 2008, and was honored by the national Latino writers group, Con Tinta, at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in 2014. Kathleen has been both a student and instructor in the Clarion West Science Fiction Workshop. Until recently, Kathleen was a fiction instructor at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island. She now lectures for Antioch University, and an instructor at the Bainbridge Artisan Resouce Network .

Review Quotes

Ink was initially published in 2012, when it must have already seemed on the knife's edge of a possible future. Releasing a second edition this year, as increasingly anti-immigrant policies seem to spring up weekly across the world, makes the world of "inks" not so much a speculative future as a chilling reflection of the present.

--NPR Books

"A clear-eyed, prescient depiction of a possible future that seems all too real today. Vourvoulias writes with complexity and compassion as her characters struggle with injustice, and as they carve out small triumphs amid tragedy and pain. A deeply grounded sense of magic permeates this story, as well as the gift and burden of memory for what has been left behind and might still be rescued or acknowledged."

-- Kate Elliott, World Fantasy Award and Nebula finalist author of Crown of Stars and Court of Fives

"A page-turner in the best sense, this is a heart-thumping, unflinching look at lives, loves and escapades in an America where fear of the Other has blown away any pretense of democratic ideals. But where there's terror and betrayal, there is also love, and courage, and humor. This is a book for our times."

-- Vandana Singh, physicist and author of Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories

"Like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, to which this novel has been compared, Vourvoulias's text makes chillingly clear how close beneath the surface of a liberal civil order lies a more oppressive regime ... ... yet it also gives us reasons for hope that people might rise above their defensive reaction to difference, refuse such separations, and seek common human community."

-- Los Angeles Review of Books

"Tight-paced and surreal, INK paints a dystopian vision in which the American dream morphs into an immigration nightmare. Weaving the fantastical with the everyday, Vourvoulias tells a story as unsettling as it is timely. A resonant, indelible novel."

-- Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and the Lowland.

"We've never needed Sabrina Vourvoulias more than we do right now. With Ink, her journalist instincts and storytelling chops bring to life a terrifying tale of a dystopia that just happens to be our reality. If we're going to survive this present political moment, we need books like this."

-- Sam J. Miller, Andre Norton award-winning author of The Art of Starving and Blackfish City

About the Author

Sabrina Vourvoulias is an award-winning Latina news editor, writer and digital storyteller. An American citizen from birth, she grew up in Guatemala during the armed internal conflict and moved to the United States when she was 15. Her news stories have been published at The Guardian US, Philly.com, Public Radio International's Global Voices, NBC10/Telemundo62, Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia Magazine, City and State PA, and Al Día News, among others. Her short fiction has been published by Tor.com, Strange Horizons and Uncanny, GUD, and Crossed Genres magazines. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and daughter. Read more at www.sabrinavourvoulias.com, and follow her on Twitter @followthelede. Kathleen Alcalá is an award-winning author of six books of fiction and non-fiction, including Deepest Roots and Spirits of the Ordinary. She received her second Artist Trust Fellowship in 2008, and was honored by the national Latino writers group, Con Tinta, at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in 2014. Kathleen has been both a student and instructor in the Clarion West Science Fiction Workshop. Until recently, Kathleen was a fiction instructor at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island. She now lectures for Antioch University, and an instructor at the Bainbridge Artisan Resouce Network .