The first printing of my book Las llaves de la ciudad (The Keys to the City) sold out after it was published in 2009. So my editor at Sexto Piso asked if I would write some more material for a new edition. It's a series of pieces I wrote about people in Mexico City-- from a 13-year-old girl who lives on the street, to guys who sell Nazi paraphernalia at the Lagunilla flea market, to a deafmute transvestite who works as a waitress at a beer joint in Tepepan.

Among the new chronicles are one about a woman who sells earphones on the metro despite being chased away by the police, a cop who patrols the canals of Xochimilco in a motorboat, and a gringo who got a license to be a taxi driver in the city as a means to complete an art project.

On Thursday, November 13, at 7:30 pm, at a marvelous new cantina called El Laberinto, on the corner of Sinaloa and Cozumel in the Colonia Roma Norte, I will be presenting the book, which is in Spanish, with my friends Francisco Goldman (author of the recently published The Interior Circuit), and Mariana Hernandez of Radio Imagen. There will be a mezcal cocktail on the house. Please come to get a signed copy or just to say hello.