Live and in person with Brookline Booksmith, at Coolidge Corner Theatre! Celebrate the release of Borderless with author Jennifer De Leon, in conversation with Celeste Ng.

Register for the event!

This event is free to attend, but an RSVP is required for entrance. You may choose free entrance, to support our store, or to preorder a copy of Borderless on the registration page to enter the event.

Donate books to students!

Author Jennifer De Leon is a former public school teacher, and she has a goal: to provide a copy of Borderless to every 9th and 10th grade student at Marlborough High School! That's 450 copies.

This high school has a high population of Latinx students, in particular Guatemalan students. Jenn wants so badly to offer "mirrors" for these students, as well as "windows" for students who may not identify with the main character, Maya.

Click this link to purchase books for donation!

Put "DONATE" in the comment field at checkout to donate a book to a Marlborough High School student!

If you would like to purchase a book for yourself to pick up at the event, please do so on the event registration page.

Borderless

Caught in the crosshairs of gang violence, a teen girl and her mother set off on a perilous journey from Guatemala City to the US border in this heart-wrenching young adult novel from the author of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From.

For seventeen-year-old Maya, trashion is her passion, and her talent for making clothing out of unusual objects landed her a scholarship to Guatemala City’s most prestigious art school and a finalist spot in the school’s fashion show. Mamá is her biggest supporter, taking on extra jobs to pay for what the scholarship doesn’t cover, and she might be even more excited than Maya about what the fashion show could do for her future career.

So when Mamá doesn’t come to the show, Maya doesn’t know what to think. But the truth is worse than she could have imagined. The gang threats in their neighborhood have walked in their front door—with a boy Maya considered a friend, or maybe more, among them. After barely making their escape, Maya and her mom have no choice but to continue their desperate flight all the way through Guatemala and Mexico in hopes of crossing the US border.

They have to cross. They must cross! Can they?

Jennifer De Leon is an author, editor, speaker, and creative writing professor who lives outside of Boston. She is the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education, the 2015–2016 Writer-in-Residence at the Boston Public Library, and a 2016–2017 City of Boston Artist-in-Residence. She is also the second recipient of the We Need Diverse Books grant. She is the author of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From and Borderless.

Moderator Celeste Ng is the bestselling author of the novels Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Her writing has been awarded the Massachusetts Book Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other honors, and has been translated into more than thirty languages.