In her latest novel, Peel My Love Like an Onion, Chicago-based poet Ana Castillo tells the story of Carmen, a flamenco dancer who overcame the ravages of childhood polio. In the book she is torn between two lovers, both fellow performers, just as she begins to feel the returning effects of the disease.

Castillo has been praised for her examinations of race and gender in both her prose and poetry. She told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr the book began as she was scribbling notes about a possible character for a short story.

About the author
Ana Castillo is a poet, novelist, essayist, editor and visual artist. In addition to Peel My Love Like an Onion, her works include My Father Was a Toltec, So Far From God, and the new children's book, My Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, the Dove. She lives in Chicago.

Books by Ana Castillo
• Peel My Love Like An Onion (Doubleday, 1999)
• So Far from God (Dutton, 1994)
• My Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, the Dove ( Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000)
• The Mixquiahuala Letters (Doubleday, 1992)
• Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (University of New Mexico Press, 1995)
• Loverboys (Penguin USA, 1997)
• Sapogonia: An Anti-Romance in 3/8 Meter (Doubleday, 1994)
• My Father Was a Toltec: And Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 1994)
• Carmen la Coja (Vintage, 2000)