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Words on a Wire
Words On A Wire

Luisana Duarte Armendáriz

By Daniel Chacón,
Will Rose
Published November 8, 2026 at 11:00 AM MST
Courtesy of Luisana Duarte Armendáriz

In this episode of Words on a Wire, host Daniel Chacón talks with Luisana Duarte Armendáriz, author of the middle-grade mystery novels Julieta and the Diamond Enigma and Julieta and the Cryptic Rose. Julieta is a curious, art-obsessed young detective whose parents work in the art world, which gives her access to the hidden corners of the Louvre in Paris and to Diego Rivera’s murals in Guanajuato, Mexico. Duarte Armendáriz describes how Julieta took shape from Amelia Bedelia, Ramona Quimby, and Flavia de Luce, and how a character who wouldn’t leave her alone grew into a series. She also explains why she chose Diego over Frida, how she wrote Paris so vividly without ever visiting, and where Julieta might go next, from Boston to Spain’s great museums. The conversation opens with a question from Chacón’s seven-year-old daughter, Lucinda, who is reading the books alongside her dad.

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Originally aired on November 8, 2026

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Words On A Wire KTEP Programming
Daniel Chacón
Daniel Chacón’s collection of stories, Unending Rooms, was the 2007 winner of the Hudson Prize. He has also been awarded the American Book Award, the Chris Isherwood Foundation Grant, and the Southwest Book Award. His first collection of stories, Chicano Chicanery was a finalist in the Patterson Fiction Prize and his novel and the shadows took him is available from Simon and Schuster. His new book is a collection of stories called Hotel Júarez: Stories, Rooms and Loops. He’s a professor of Fiction Writing, Kafka, and Latino/a literature in the Creative Writing Department at UTEP.
See stories by Daniel Chacón
Will Rose
Will Rose is a longtime technology and marketing executive based out of NYC and Texas. He is the co-founder of Words on a Wire’s publishing imprint, eRadical Books, and now spearheads marketing strategy for the Words on a Wire podcast. He also serves as Chief Technology Officer at the EdTech startup, Student Select, and as Head of Data Science at the artificial intelligence company, Harqen AI.
See stories by Will Rose