We chat with author Romina Garber about Wolves of No World, which is a 2-in-1 duology paperback of Lobizona and Cazadora that weaves together Argentine folklore and what it means to belong.
Hi Romina! It’s been just over five years since our interview about Cazadora. What have you been up to in the last couple years and the lead up to the 2-in-1 book release for Wolves of No World?
Hi! It’s always such a treat to catch up with you guys. Yours was my favorite review of Lobizona, so I’m glad for this chance to touch base about the series.
Since the publication of Cazadora, I’ve released two new YA fantasies with Wednesday Books, both standalones featuring paranormal romances & somewhat haunted settings. Castle of the Cursed is a gothic tale about a girl named Estela who loses her parents in a public tragedy & accepts an invitation from an estranged Spanish aunt to move overseas to their ancestral castle—which may or may not be alive & carnivorous. The Last Vampire is about a hopeless romantic named Lorena who enrolls in a brand-new boarding school in a once-condemned Victorian manor in hopes of finding her own Mr. Darcy—but awakens the world’s last vampire instead!
Why is the rerelease of Lobizona and Cazadora in a single volume a timely decision? Any particular reason why the 2-in-1 format was chosen?
What makes this six-year-old story timely is that from the very first page, it reads like it was written today. We sadly find ourselves once more dealing with an administration whose inhuman treatment of undocumented immigrants is costing lives & inflicting trauma.
When Lobizona first came out in 2020, I heard from many readers who thought the early chapters were dystopian, & that ICE haunting the streets of Miami to meet deportation quotas sounded like a made-up future & not the reality for many of their neighbors. In 2026, those scenes hit different.
I think the 2-in-1 format suits the storyline because Cazadora kicks off with Manu crossing the border into a hybrid human-Septimus world; so the reader’s act of flipping the book mirrors how Manu’s universe is being turned upside-down. It’s also particularly fitting because when I first outlined Lobizona, I unwittingly plotted out the full duology & only realized it when I got to page 400 in my draft & saw that I was only at the midpoint in my outline!
Can you tell our readers a little more about how you like to use fantasy to tackle real-world issues, and what it means to you for Lobizona and Cazadora to get this refresh right now?
The importance of this refresh was made clear to me earlier this year, when I was chosen as the featured author for the Saint Paul Public Library’s Read Brave 2026 program, their annual citywide book club. Thousands of copies of Lobizona had been distributed to students & community members ahead of my arrival, in both English & Spanish. At eight school visits, teens told me about classmates whose parents had been deported & asked me to sign books for friends who were attending my talks virtually because they no longer felt safe coming to school. At the final event, onstage with the mayor & the director of the public library system, I was thanked by Library Board Chair & Councilmember Saura Jost “for giving our city a story that we needed, one that helped us connect, recover, heal, & understand one another during one of the most difficult challenges that our city has ever faced.”
I find fantasy to be the ideal genre for tackling polarizing issues because it removes their charge. There’s a moment in Lobizona when Manu asks her surrogate grandmother why so many Latin American authors employ magical realism in their stories, & Perla answers, “Sometimes reality strays so far from what’s rational that we can only explain it through fantasy.”
In our previous interview, you mentioned not feeling represented in the books you read growing up. How does this new edition change that and reclaim your Latinx identity?
With this series, I set out to write the story teen-me needed, so it’s been deeply rewarding to hear from teens who see themselves in Manu. It’s also been healing to speak with students who are reading Lobizona with their classmates at schools in both the US & Argentina. Yet I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the pain from all the challenges the book has received in numerous counties, mainly in Florida & Texas.
Growing up, I thought I couldn’t find myself on the shelf because my story hadn’t been written yet. Now, that omission feels intentional. There are people out there who don’t believe our identities are worth celebrating, & that’s why we need to keep writing.
If you could describe Wolves of No World (the combined edition!) in only five words, what would they be?
Magical, vivid, resonant, revolutionary, empowering.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced working on the 2-in-1 format? Anything you had to axe so the book wouldn’t be hefty?
Lobizona was originally slated for publication in May of 2020. But in March, Covid happened, & one by one, businesses began to shut down—including printers. That’s exactly where Lobizona found herself when May rolled around: paused, mid-print.
Then, something happened that was even more mindblowing to me than a global pandemic: One of my then-heroes, the author whose books put me on my career path, said some dangerous things that summer (& more stuff since) that I vehemently disagree with. Things that go entirely against the message of my story, which is about a girl who—according to her magical society—was born into the wrong body.
Trans rights are human rights.
My mind instantly went to all the references to that author’s work that I’d packed into mine, making it no longer a safe space for my readers, & I begged my editor to let me make changes. Unfortunately, that could not happen then—but this 2-in-1 edition presented a new opportunity to right that wrong.
I’m happy to report that all references to that magic school (a school without any Latino representation) have been shed.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
Worst: Write what you know. (Boring!) Best: Read your dialogue out loud to make sure it sounds natural. (Very useful!)
What can readers expect next from you? Any plans for a book 3? Maybe we’ll get a 3-in-1 volume someday!
Not exactly a book 3—not yet, anyway!—but I’ve recently completed a 42-page short story that takes place after the events of Cazadora that reads a lot like the first act of a potential third installment. I’ll be sending it to all readers who preorder the 2-in-1 edition by 9/14 & fill out this form!
