Book Talk | Mud on the Moon by Nita Noveno

MUD ON THE MOON is a hybrid memoir that weaves a daughter’s journey of discovering her Filipino immigrant father’s hidden past with imaginative storytelling, offering a look into migration, identity, and the intergenerational legacies that shape who we are. 

Born in Southeast Alaska, Nita Noveno traces the legacy of her father, who arrived in the US in 1928 as part of a wave of Filipino men seeking better opportunities through manual labor in agriculture and other industries. The book alternates between Nita's coming-of-age story and imagined chapters of her father's life, revealing the gaps and silences that lie between their experiences. With a blend of personal and historical imagery, Mud on the Moon offers a rare glimpse into the lives of Filipino immigrants in America. It is a meditation on how family, memory, and identity are shaped by the stories we inherit, both spoken and unspoken, across generations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nita Noveno is the recipient of the 2024 Women's Prose Prize from Red Hen Press for her hybrid memoir Mud on the Moon, published in August 2026. Publishers Weekly calls it "a moving blend of autobiography and imagination" and "an auspicious first outing." A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at The New School, her creative nonfiction and hybrid work has appeared in MĀNOA, Hippocampus, The Margins, and elsewhere. She teaches creative nonfiction, composition, and literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and is the founder, curator, and host emeritus of Sunday Salon, a long-running reading series in New York City. The child of immigrant parents from the Philippines, she grew up in the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska and now lives in Queens, NY.

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