Ruben Reyes Jr. Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Ruben Reyes Jr. is a published author of fiction.

He is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants. He is the writer of There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, a story collection that was named as a finalist for The Story Prize.

Ruben has degrees from Harvard as well as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has had his writing featured in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, BOMB Magazine, LitHub, Lightspeed Magazine, and more.

Ruben resides in Queens and is originally from the southern California region. His first novel is Archive of Unknown Universes. He has been longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, was a finalist for The Story Prize, a finalist for the California Book Award, and has been longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and the New American Voices Award.

Ruben Reyes Jr. has been called a ‘wonder’ by author Hector Tobar. If you are looking for a vibrant new voice in fiction to check out, look no further.

There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven is a collection of short stories that feature Central American identity in a way that crossed worlds of the past, present and future to show the reader what can happen when your life is no longer the one that you know.

The collection features different stories such as a mam waking up one morning to find out that he is a famous reggaeton star. An older grandmother is slowly turning into a marionette puppet. An academic who is struggling finds out the horrible cost of being a self-made man.

The author comes up with dreamlike worlds to show the reader what we might do if we woke up in the morning a la an insect in Kafka’s mind and found out that our lives were unrecognizable. The boundaries between the past, present, and future are all blurring– what would we do?

What would we do in a world where technology menaces us and bureaucracy goes on unchecked through our daily lives with uncanny dread? The characters range from cyborgs to ex-guerrilla fighters to pop stars to mango farmers. They all have to make choices that are far from easy.

These choices might mean life or death. But it also might let them be heard in a world that seems to have the goal of silencing Central American voices. Full of humor and heart, this is a collection of stories that will be able to subvert all that we think we know about migration and its consequences.

This collection of stories also captures what it truly means to take up a new life, whether forced or volunttarily. Reyes is able to transport the reader to other worlds while also alerting us to the heartache and injustice we have in our own.

Archive of Unknown Universes is the first fictional novel from Ruben Reyes Jr. This book follows two different families who are living in alternate timelines regarding the Salvadoran civil war.

The book starts out in the year 2018 in Cambridge. Ana and Luis have a lot of things in common, but despite this, they find that their relationship is on the rocks. They even both have mothers who fled El Salvador during the war.

Ana is looking for answers and goes against her better judgment to use The Defractor. This is an experimental device that lets the user look into different versions of their lives. What she sees takes her and Luis on an adventure going through Havana and San Salvador to try and find out more about the family histories they really want to know more about, eager to learn what they could have done to fix what is.

Meanwhile, in 1978 in Havana, the Salvadoran war is brewing. Main character Neto is a young revolutionary who is skilled at forging government papers. He goes to a meeting where he meets Rafael. It is a meeting for the People’s Revolutionary Army.

The two immediately bond and share an intense love that is also forbidden. The pair shed their fake names and show themselves to each other inside their activism’s covert world. But when their work means that they are separated, they stay in touch by writing weekly letters.

Then the war keeps going on and forces beyond their control mean that they might be pulled apart forever. This genre-bending novel is a stunning story that ends with different worlds, one where war is cooncluded with a peace treaty and one where the Salvadoran government wins.

A daring imagination of what might have happened as well as a reckoning of the our past. Read this incredible debut fictional novel from Ruben Reyes Jr. to experience it for yourself!