Connie Pertuz-Meza

A 2022 Emerging Voices Pen America Fellow, Connie’s work has been published widely, including in The Rumpus, Kweli Literary Review, Chalkbeat, Lunch Ticket, and Voices in The Middle, as well as in several anthologies. Her early chapter book, MAGIC OUTSIDE MY WINDOW, was published by Scholastic in 2022 and later translated by the author into Spanish in 2024. Connie lives in Brooklyn with her husband and young adult children.

MAESTRA: LIFE LESSONS FROM A CLASSROOM (Memoir)

This narrative memoir recounts Connie’s experience over two decades working in the biggest public school system in the nation. While many join the rank and file to save children, she wasn't one of those teachers. Instead, she was looking to save herself. Connie was not a career change nor a recent college graduate from the mid-west searching to make a difference in an inner-city school, unlike the Teacher Fellows beginning to flood New York City at the time. Growing up in the hood as a first generation Colombian American, on welfare, in a home plagued by domestic violence, addiction, and mental illness, teaching seemed like the safe nook she craved as a child. In early February of 2001, unaware of the depth of her trauma, Connie entered a minefield of triggers. She slipped on a pink cardigan, pinned a crochet heart to my lapel, and walked into her first substitute assignment. She limped out a few hours later with a hoarse voice, aching feet, and a headache. What she encountered was familiar— chaos, albeit an organized kind. Still, it felt like home.

Placed in a classroom with no teaching credentials or experience whatsoever, except for two months of substitute work, Connie was oblivious to the headlines of the teacher shortage in NYC. She had not been a special hire, but a desperate one. I quickly realized I had two choices: sink or swim. On survivor mode long before she entered the NYC public school system, she began to paddle and along the way learned to swim. She would’ve kept swimming until she almost drowned.

Rights Available: All

DELORES DREAMS (YA Fiction)
It’s 1994 and 15-year-old Delores Cadenas has never lived anywhere but Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Delores finds refuge from her parents’ turbulent relationship in the arms of family friend bad boy David, himself no stranger to unstable households. When Delores’s parents catch her sneaking around with David, her world is turned upside down—her parents are sending her to Colombia so Delores can learn exactly what Mami sacrificed to give her daughter a better life.

Determined to find her way out of Colombia and back home and not at all interested in whatever lesson her parents want to teach her, but in Colombia she finds herself growing close to her cousin Francisco. Francisco has secrets of his own, and soon Delores can’t ignore the mysterious rolls of cash in his pockets, his flashy jewelry, or the gun tucked into his waistband. While in Colombia, Delores comes to terms with how differently her life would have turned out if her parents hadn’t made the choice to immigrate to the United States. Delores is finally able to see all that was gained and all that was lost by being born Colombian American and from this place she’s able to finally define herself according to her terms. No one else's. Spanning continents and generations, DELORES DREAMS was a finalist for the 2023 We Need Diverse Books Mentorship Program.

Rights Available: All
Agent: Zeynep Sen