Michael Zapata and Gabriel Bump Included on Tribune's List of New Writers to Know

Michael Zapata, SAIC academic advisor, and alum Gabriel Bump (BFA 2015) are two new Chicago writers to know according to the Chicago Tribune. Their debut works, Zapata's The Lost Book of Adana Moreau and Bump's Everywhere You Don't Belong were included on the Tribune's list of five new Chicago writers whose debut novels you should read this winter.

Zapata's novel tells the story of New Orleans boy named Maxwell Moreau whose father is a pirate and mother, Adana, a Dominican immigrant, writes a surprise best-selling sci-fi novel. Of his work, Zapata says, "When I sat to write I wanted to tell a story about people between things, not quite accepted. I think a lot of Latin Americans don’t feel fully American or Latin American."

Of his novel, Bump says to the Tribune, “I wanted to write a novel for the teenagers riding the Jeffery Local with their headphones on, their hats tuned straight, their minds on girlfriends and forever love, their unfinished algebra worksheets crumpled in their backpacks, their dreams about belonging to a peaceful world.”