A bodega is much more than a neighborhood grocery store—it's a lifeline to community and culture.

Tombolo Books is thrilled to welcome local author Amaris Castillo to the bookstore to celebrate the launch of Bodega Stories, her debut creative nonfiction collection of stories and vignettes.

In Bodega Stories, Castillo takes readers inside Orlando Latin Market, a bodega owned and operated by her parents in St. Petersburg, Florida, to reveal a thriving local hub that bridges generations, languages, and traditions.

Castillo will be in conversation with fellow Florida author Gloria Muñoz! 

More about Bodega Stories

Meet the regulars: Castillo's glamorous Tía Margarita, who has worked part-time at the bodega for years; longtime cook Alberto, who arrives early to prepare the store's rice, beans, empanadas, and croquetas; Chico, the owner of the barbershop next door; and Esther, who visits after church every Sunday for her crispy chicharrones. Through captivating and charming true stories of visitors who come looking for products from Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, and many other countries, readers get a glimpse into the lives of employees and customers as they navigate matters of immigration, love, history, food, and identity.

Interwoven are snapshots of daily life, like a bulletin board outside the store where local residents post apartments for rent, messages through the bodega's Facebook page asking for hard-to-find items, and photos from the past and present. Including Castillo's own family's story from the Dominican Republic to New York to Florida, Bodega Stories is a portrait of finding home—between the cultures we inherit and the ones we embrace.

Amaris Castillo is a Brooklyn native and daughter of Dominican immigrants. A former newspaper reporter, her work has appeared in the New York Times, Lowell Sun, Bradenton Herald, and elsewhere. She currently works at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and lives in Tampa Bay with her family. Bodega Stories is her debut.

Gloria Muñoz is the author of the poetry collections Your Biome Has Found You and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Florida Gold Medal Book Award for Poetry. She is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow, a Hedgebrook Fellow, a Macondista, a Highlights Foundation Diverse Verse Fellow, and a part of Las Musas. Her debut novel, This Is the Year, was hailed as “brilliantly layered” by Booklist in a starred review. Visit her online at gloriamunoz.com and on Instagram at @bygloriamunoz.