Me:

BRYAN ALLEN FIERRO holds an MFA from Pacific University in Oregon. He grew up in Los Angeles and now splits his time between L.A. and Anchorage, Alaska, where he works as a firefighter and paramedic. Fierro is the recipient of the Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in Fiction, and recent recipient of the Rasmuson Individual Artist Award for literary and script works. He has been named one of the top ten new Latino writers to read for 2017 by Latino Stories.
His 2017 debut short fiction collection is Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul (The University of Arizona Press, Camino del Sol series)

Project:

"Inside Passage"

Miguel only wants to work the fishing boats in the deep waters of Los Mochis in Sinaloa, Mexico, to build a life that includes his curandera Grandmother, Josephina, and his moral-compass brother, Rafa—a young man hell-bent on heading north to the States.

When Rafa is kidnapped and killed by low-level cartel for freeing a truckload of young girls destined for sex slavery, Miguel must leave Los Mochis. He reaches the Pacific Northwest and stows away on a couple’s sailboat traveling the inside passage from Bellingham, WA to Ketchikan, AK. Miguel forges friendship, saving the couple in treacherous waters when the husband has a diabetic emergency.

Miguel runs from Alaska authorities into the southeast forest on the cusp of winter. He depends on both the skills taught by Rafa, and his grandmother’s third-eye mindfulness to survive. Miguel encounters the young Inuit girl, Ida, fleeing her sexually abusive father, Jack. The teens bridge language with what they share in their separate, but equally magical, cultural tales—a Mexican boogieman and Yupik Little People, Ancient Deer dancer warriors and Raven’s Creation, all hold the clues and warnings on how to navigate a harsh land.

Alaska Trooper, Matthew Wilde, has a sordid history with Ida’s criminally intent father. When Ida’s Grandmother shines a light on Ida’s disappearance and Miguel’s arrival, Matthew sets out into the rain forest with Jack to find the runaways and get at the truth. Jack has his own plans for a cover up. Cultural story magic comes to life to spin the final survival chapter as Jack catches Miguel and bears down on Ida—but Jack never believed in story truth, all its balancing consequences now revealed.