Author Luna Moore Latorre

Things I Love:

1. Nature! Especially if it involves hiking or swimming on a warm, sunny day. My perfect day is definitely in the mountains or at the beach.
2. Making people laugh. It’s one of the best parts of being alive. If I’m not joking around, something has gone terribly wrong.
3. Movies that are so bad they’re good. Bride of Chucky. Zombeavers. Santa Jaws. If it’s objectively ridiculous, I’ve seen it and cackled the ENTIRE time. I’m never too serious or too dignified to laugh uncontrollably at a shark in a Santa hat who comes to life from a kid’s comic book and then starts eating everybody in town.
4. The sheer flow state of a long walk. My friends make fun of me because I’m always the one to say, “It’s only an hour to the restaurant and an hour back, which is only 2 hours of walking. We don’t even need to drive.” I have so much excess energy that I gotta be walked 3 times a day like the beloved family golden retriever.
5. Listening to music. I cannot remember the last time I got through an entire day WITHOUT Spotify. I was raised by a Latina mom (I can easily sleep through a cumbia or mariachi album and raucous laughter) and a classic-rock-loving dad- if my parents weren’t lovingly bickering about whose CD was getting played, something was UP.

Things I Hate:

1. Being rushed in a bookstore. Don’t come with me if you’re not prepared to stay at least an hour, make huge book stacks together, discuss the pros and cons of each book, and then help each other pick two or three to actually buy.
2. COMPLETELY unnecessary uncertainty. “Do you want to go to a blind movie at Regal, where you don’t know what movie you’re seeing until it starts?” Fuck no. “We’ll let you know LATER when your package is expected to arrive.” UGH. “Let’s play it by ear.” Let’s not. (But also, I am working on being less of a control freak).
3. The idea that not caring about anything or anyone makes you intellectually superior. I HATED The Stranger by Albert Camus for this very reason. Who wouldn’t cry at their mom’s funeral?! I’ve cried because the full moon one night in July made me realize that she has witnessed the lives of every single person who has ever lived. Apathy SICKENS me.
4. The shocking, appalling decline in literacy among Gen Alpha. These kids don’t even read novels from front to back in English class anymore. They don’t know how to write an essay. They can’t hold a conversation for more than five minutes. Nobody seems as stressed out about this as I am. What will the world look like a decade from now, when these kids have become women and men who used ChatGPT to get through college and lack the attention span to read even a single book a year?

Causes That Matter to Me: Fighting Climate Change & Environmental Destruction, Promoting Literacy, Women’s Liberation, Anti-racism, LGBTQ Rights, Support for the Arts, Veganism/Animal Rights, and more.

Least Surprising Fun Fact of All Time: I’m really into astrology, and 90% of my birth chart is in Leo, Taurus, and Sagittarius. If you don’t speak Gen Z, that means absolutely nothing to you. If you do speak Gen Z, you don’t even need to Google the (positive and negative) stereotypes of each of those signs to know that they clock me.

Actually Surprising Fun Fact: I have never eaten an animal in my life, at least, not on purpose (you can’t trust these shady restaurants not to slip you chicken broth once in a blue moon). My parents have been together for 40 years and went vegetarian at the start of their relationship, then raised my brothers and me vegetarian from birth.

4 years ago, I switched over to being vegan, giving up dairy and eggs in protest of the violence and abuse that factory farms inflict on dairy cows and chickens. “But how do you get protein?” Tempeh, tofu, black beans, red beans, chickpeas, soyrizo, lentils, nuts, avocado, spinach, mushrooms, jackfruit, and more are all huge staples in my diet. I have the hair, skin, bloodwork, and Trader Joe’s receipts to back up my high protein levels.