Fiction that refuses to stay in one place.
Born in Canada. Raised in Colombia. Writing from the Pacific Northwest.
Time Travel,
book bans,
and the fight for truth
When systems break,
ordinary people
push back
Hidden manuscripts, forbidden maps, and the people who saved them
What we carry when we leave, what we find
when we return
A novel about the priest who fought the Spanish conquest: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas
A historian working in the Archivo General de Indias examines an uncatalogued manuscript from a private donation — what may be an autograph manuscript of Bartolomé de las Casas's Historia de las Indias, organized not as the published version scholars have relied on for a century and a half, but as a series of probanzas or legal testimonies, gathered from witnesses across five decades of Spanish colonization in the Americas.
The testimonies span the full arc of Las Casas's life and conscience. At the center of all of them is Las Casas himself — the young priest who arrived in the New World with an encomienda and a clear conscience, and who spent the next fifty years becoming the most sustained indictment that any participant in the colonial enterprise ever produced.
Title in Spanish: El Libro de los Lamentos
Paperback, ebook
→ English: https://mybook.to/BookOfLaments
→ Spanish: https://mybook.to/LibroDeLamentos
Valentina, a documentary filmmaker, arrives at her grandparents' house with a camcorder and a canvas tote full of objects she has taken from their storage rooms: photographs, a notebook in an unfamiliar hand, and a typescript biography of the man she is there to understand. Her grandmother Julia Inés, Tita, is eighty-four. The famous painter died years ago. The paintings have spread through the house like water filling a vessel.
What follows is a story told object by object, memory by memory, across three generations of a Colombian family: Tita's childhood in Pasto at the foot of the Andes, with a father whose absences were so regular they acquired the weight of a presence; the years in Brazil, where her husband — el Maestro — found the subject that would define his career; and the long decades in Bogotá, where the family built something that was part household, part art enterprise, part mythology. Papacito is the word Tita used for her own father, gone more than he was home, enormous in the doorways, unforgettable. It is also the word her children used for the painter. The book asks what it means when that word carries both the longing and the loss.
A novel about fathers — their greatness, their absences, and the women who held everything together while they were away.
English · Kindle · Paperback
Your grandchildren deserve to know your story. Now there's an easier way to tell it.
You've lived a life worth remembering — the struggles and joys, the people you loved, the lessons learned the hard way. But writing it all down? That's where most people get stuck: the blank page, the fear of not being a "real writer," the overwhelming question of where to even start.
Your Story Matters shows you how to use AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude as patient interviewers, helpful editors, and encouraging writing partners. No tech expertise required. No special skills. Just your memories and the desire to preserve them. Inside: step-by-step guidance from first conversation to finished book, the "tight leash" method that keeps AI from taking over your voice, 100+ memory prompts to get started immediately, and complete instructions for self-publishing through Amazon KDP.
Title in Spanish: Ponlo en Palabras
English: https://mybook.to/YourStoryMatters
Spanish: https://mybook.to/PonloEnPalabras
Before turning to fiction, I spent three decades as a researcher in information science and international development. From 2008 to 2025 I was on the faculty of the Information School at the University of Washington. Earlier work was based at IDRC in Ottawa and at universities and research centers in Latin America. The catalog runs to roughly 135 publications between 1993 and 2025, across peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, edited volumes, book chapters, monographs, and reports. The work groups into a handful of recurring themes:
Public access computing. Comparative studies of libraries, telecentres, and cybercafés as places where people without computers got online. Includes a 25-country landscape study and a 2011 IGI Global volume.
ICT4D evaluation, theory, and methodology. Critical work on whether information and communication technologies actually deliver on the promises made for them in development contexts. Includes the "Aunt Ofelia" letters, twenty years apart.
Colombia and Latin America. Studies of ICT policy, social appropriation, and community impact in Colombia, often published in parallel English and Spanish editions.
Migration, borders, and information practices. Long-running collaboration on how undocumented migrants at the US–Mexico border seek information, navigate surveillance, and interact with humanitarian organizations. Produced the Mind the Five privacy framework.
Participatory photography. Development and application of Fotohistorias and Photostories as visual research methods for working with migrants, indigenous communities, and other groups whose stories are rarely heard on their own terms.
Indigenous communities and community development. Information systems built with Tseltal Maya communities in Chiapas and indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon, integrating radio, libraries, and participatory planning.
Technology pushback and refusal. A counter-narrative to connectivity triumphalism: how and why people resist constant online presence.
Latinx academia and sanctuary. Work on the experience of Latinx faculty, staff, and students, and on the sanctuary movement during the first Trump administration.
For the full publication list and current citation counts, see my Google Scholar profile.
Ricardo Gómez is a novelist, essayist, and retired University of Washington professor whose work crosses borders, centuries, and languages. He writes historical fiction, YA adventure series, climate novels, and intimate stories rooted in Colombian memory — in English and in Spanish.
Read the latest: Stories Across Borders on Substack
Essays on the real history behind the fiction — from Cahokia to Port Townsend to Bogotá
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© Ricardo Gómez · ricardogomez.net [Books] [About] [Amazon Author Page] [Substack: substack.com/@storiesacrossborders100]
"Stories that cross borders, centuries, and ways of knowing."