Interview With Alfredo Cáceres (Through The Black Gate)

Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Alfredo Cáceres (Through The Black Gate)!

 

 

 

 

Meet the Author: Alfredo Cáceres

Alfredo Cáceres is an author and illustrator from Santiago, Chile. He has worked in picture books, magazines, newspapers, and video games, including the acclaimed Blight Harbor series and New York Times bestseller The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science. His debut graphic novel Through the Black Gate is based on the city of Valdivia, Chile, where he grew up between rain and moss. Visit him on Instagram @RedoLaf.

Instagram * BlueSky

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Book: Through The Black Gate

A “[p]oignant, insightful, and otherworldly” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) middle grade graphic novel about an orphaned girl and a music-loving boy who venture into the land of the dead with the hope of seeing their loved ones again. Thirteen-year-old orphan Irene believes her father’s soul is trapped inside her cat, Moses. Living at her caregiver Ruth’s hostel, Irene spends every waking hour studying a mystical book that her parents left behind in the fire that took their lives. Irene thinks the book can help her see them again, if only Moses will give her a clue. Then, just as a strange fog sweeps over their quiet Chilean town, a mysterious young musician named Francis moves into the hostel. Irene and her new roommate don’t particularly get along, but Moses soon leads them both through the fog to a strange tear in reality: an entrance to the Land of the Dead. Believing this is the key to seeing her parents again, Irene and Francis cross to the other side. There, they encounter the Ferryman of the Dead, who is desperate to escape into the Land of the Living. The Ferryman offers to return Irene and Francis’s loved ones in exchange for their help. In the face of such a massive promise, Irene and Francis must decide whether to risk the fate of both the Lands of the Living and the Dead or be braver than they ever thought possible.

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~Author Chat~

 

YABC: What inspired you to write this book?
The loss of my father more than 20 years ago. He was full of stories and things to tell and have a conversation about. I never paid much attention to what both of my parents had to tell, but now I’m 43 and I realize that our meals and dinners were so interesting, from Star Wars quotes to be analyzed to weird mystic authors and their views on life.
YABC: What came first, the concept, landscape, characters, or something else?
A scene, written and drawn a long time ago. A man asks an older woman about her cat and she answers him she doesn’t know what her cat is, but she suspects it to be her father’s soul that remained inside the feline after he died in a fire, the cat who also had died appeared on her window the next day and never left her side.
YABC: What can readers expect to find in your books?
Well, I think what I most enjoy when reading a book is the conversations between rivals, the confessions of the guilty, the advice of the elders and the points of view people have of the unknown nature of life.
YABC: Which was the most difficult or emotional scene to narrate?
To have a climax and not rely on violence to end the story rather on empathy. The thing is I think the story is about absence and its impact on life so I tried not to be all knowing and leave the story with
YABC: If you could time travel, what would you want to see?
The Odyssey being performed around a bonfire, even without an ancient Greek translator I bet it was something emotional to behold.
YABC: What daily thing do you see that brings you joy?
People sharing their life online, their hobbies, their walks, their art. Not adding to the cruelty, not adding to the hateful points of view, but to what makes life worth living.
YABC: What do you do when you procrastinate?
I play the guitar, draw things for fun, read as much as I can, go on hikes in the south of Chile.
YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?
The last book I read was The memory police by Yoko Ogawa. It was something that had a Kazuo Ishiguro, Jose Saramago thing going on about it and will be thinking about that ending for a while.

Title: Through The Black Gate

Author: Alfredo Cáceres

Illustrator: Alfredo Cáceres

Release Date: 06/30/2026

Publisher: Atheneum

Genre: Middle Grade Graphic Novel

Age Range: 8-12

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