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- Education
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- Generational Issues
- Hispanic/Latino/Chicano/Xicano
- Journalism / Literary / Author
- Overcoming Adversity
- Racial Issues
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Angela M. Sanchez Formerly Homeless, Writer, Cartoonist, Magician, Education Advocate, First Generation Latino College Graduate
Angela M. Sanchez has written and published Scruffy and the Egg, a children's book, and Coyotes in Amarillo Heights, her fantastical, yet gritty young-adult novel about gentrification and a young Latina’s struggle to be true to herself amid conflicting expectations from her family and community. She is most interested in urban fantasy and cartoons.
She came of age in the Great Recession of the late 2000s and her writing is informed by her experiences of that debacle. Namely, in 2007, when she was a junior in high school in Glendale, her father, a single parent, lost his job as an architectural draftsman. Soon after, father and daughter were evicted from their Glendale apartment, the only home Ms. Sanchez had ever known. They lived in motels and then in a homeless shelter in Pasadena until the spring of 2009, when a Section 8 voucher allowed them to rent an apartment in Highland Park.
That is where they were living when Ms. Sanchez graduated from high school, with stellar grades and an acceptance letter to UCLA. It is where they remained after their rent was raised to a market rate in 2013. It is where Ms. Sanchez still lives, but now without her father. He died of cancer in 2016, though he lived long enough to see her graduate from UCLA, with a bachelor’s degree (in History) followed by a master’s degree (in Education).
When Angela is not drawing, she writes on issues related to social justice and access to higher education. Angela writes a blog, Poverty2Professional, where she tracks her own journey from being a homeless teenager to navigating college.
She is a proud alumna of UCLA and a workshops, presentations and readings to family shelters, schools, libraries and other organizations.
Angela M. Sanchez is part of a group of writers named, “Emerging Voices,” a seven-month program that provides mentors, classes and networking opportunities to promising new writers who feel isolated from the literary establishment.