Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith for an in-store event with M. Evelina Galang to discuss and celebrate the release of When the Hibiscus Falls. She will be in conversation with writer Grace Talusan.

Seventeen stories traverse borderlines, mythic and real, in the lives of Filipino and Filipino American women and their ancestors.

Moving from small Philippine villages of the past to the hurricane-beaten coast of near-future Florida, When the Hibiscus Falls examines the triumphs and sorrows that connect generations of women. Daughters, sisters, mothers, aunties, cousins, and lolas commune with their ancestors and their descendants, mourning what is lost when an older generation dies, celebrating what is gained when we safeguard their legacy for those who come after us. Featuring figures familiar from M. Evelina Galang's other acclaimed and richly imagined novels and stories, When the Hibiscus Falls dwells within the complexity of family, community, and Filipino American identity. Each story is an offering, a bloom that unfurls its petals and holds space in the sun.

M. Evelina Galang is the author of a previous story collection, Her Wild American Self, two novels, One Tribe and Angel De La Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery, and the nonfiction book Lola's House: Filipino Women Living with War. She edited the anthology Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. Galang directed the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami from 2009-2019 and served as VONA Board President from 2018-2023. She lives in Miami.

Moderator Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction. Her writing has been supported by the NEA, the Fulbright, US Artists, the Brother Thomas Fund, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University.