Sam Quinones, Los Angeles Times reporter and author of two acclaimed books, will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 4, in the M.R. and Evelyn Hudson Auditorium of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College. His lecture is free and open to the public.

Quinones’ books, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration and True Tales from another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx, are collections of nonfiction stories from Quinones’ 10 years in Mexico. In 2004, Quinones returned to Los Angeles to work at the Times covering immigration-related stories, gangs and drug trafficking.

Quinones’ colorful life reads like a novel. In 1987, he found his first journalism job at the Orange County Register. In 1988, he moved to Stockton, Calif., where he covered gangs, dope and murder as a crime reporter for the Stockton Record. In 1992, he moved to Seattle to write about county government and politics for the Tacoma News-Tribune. In 1994, Quinones left for Mexico, where he lived briefly in a drug-rehabilitation clinic in Zamora, resided with drag queens in Mazatlan and hung out with merchants in Mexico City’s neighborhood of Tepito, a street gang and the PRI congressmen known as the Bronx.

On the border, he spent time with the last apostle of a splinter group of polygamous Mormons, followed the promoters of Tijuana's opera scene and visited with a street gang, makers of plaster statues of Mickey Mouse and Spiderman in that city's Colonia Libertad.

And now Quinones’ mission is to encourage people to write their own stories in approximately 750 words, which he publishes on his website under Tell Your True Tale.

This fall, students in JCCC’s Creative Writing class taught by English professor Danny Alexander have been submitting true personal stories to Quinones for his critique.

Quinones’ evening presentation is about his own work and perhaps one or two JCCC student stories. The presentation is sponsored by JCCC’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

For more information about Quinones’s presentation, contact Diane Kappen, assistant professor, psychology, at 913-469-8500, ext. 5642, or e-mail.