Inga Paterson-Zuñiga
Author of:
Cinco pesos (2018)
Ahorita (2018)
Madre Tierra (2019)
Inga has taught Spanish for 24 years in Northern New Jersey, 16 of which have been at the middle school level. She has had the great fortune of being able to raise her son bilingual and bicultural and spend her summers in Central Mexico with her husband’s family. One of her greatest joys of teaching has been sharing her firsthand experiences of life in Mexico with her students. It has helped her to feel more connected to her second home abroad when she cannot be there. In this process she has realized that everyone has a story to tell and there will always be an audience for a good story. She gathered that, because her students were so keen on her stories and were learning so much Spanish from them, rather than limiting her audience of learners to just her own students, there was no doubt an audience for her books beyond her own classroom. This is what set Inga on a journey to start self-publishing her own novelitas with simple yet culturally immersive stories about life in Central Mexico that are written for novice level Spanish learners.