María wrote the screenplay Santitos, on which she based her novel. The film was produced by John Sayles and successfully released in Latin America in January of 2001. To date, the film has received awards in 14 international Film Festivals, such as the Latin Cinema Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Special Jury Award at the Rencontres Cinémas de Toulouse, France, and Best Opera Prima by the Critique Française.
She founded The Other Truth Productions, LLC, a content production company, where she has a pipeline of film and television projects in various stages of development. She is currently developing the television mini-series, Mudflap Girl, based on her second novel, González & Daughter Trucking Co. and a screenplay she co-wrote with Pepe Stepensky, Moishe is Moishe. She is also developing a television series based on her latest novel, L.A. Weather.
María has taught numerous Creative Writing courses and workshops at UCLA Extension since 1994: Magic Realism, Written Voice and Short Story Writing. She has been an advisor at the Sundance Film Institute Screenwriters Labs in Mexico and Brazil. She has been a novel and screenplay advisor at the Creative Content Foundation in Barcelona and she has been a mentor for the PEN Center Emerging Voices Program since 2000.
Her third novel, L.A. Weather, published by Flatiron Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers, is due out in 2021.
If you belong to a book club requesting her participation, please include your meeting date for a reply in a timely fashion. Some of the most frequently asked questions are answered in these links:
/ Q&A for Esperanza’s Box of Saints/ Q&A for González & Daughter Trucking Co.