About

In 2024, Marta Elva was invited as guest speaker at the 61st Annual North American Invitational Model United Nations (NAIMUN) in Washington, DC. This is one of the oldest UN simulations for high school students in North America and the world. Since 1963, this conference has been a forum in which a dynamic range of young students come from around the world to seek solutions to the various problems of the world through discussion, negotiation, and debate. Marta’s professional interest in socio-political dynamics captured the attention and imagination of students and staff.
Marta Elva’s first novel, American Tumbleweeds, was published in 2016 by Circling Rivers. It was selected a finalist of the SARTON WOMEN’S BOOK AWARD that same year. The American Tumbleweeds book tour was managed by her husband Michael, who spent hours on the phone scheduling readings and book signings at libraries and independent bookstores in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Barnes and Noble hosted readings in Massachusetts, Texas, and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and Las Cruces. And the University of Texas in El Paso invited Marta as guest speaker during National Hispanic Heritage month. American Tumbleweeds is now distributed by Irie Books in Santa Fe, NM.
Marta retired from a career in television production and independent film, working for such notable institutions as National Geographic and WNET, the flagship station of PBS, in New York City, where she received several Emmy nominations. Marta also served on the Council of the Writers Guild of America East, the union representing screenwriters for the film and television industry. She remains a member of the WGAE as well as the Author’s Guild.
Marta graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a degree in Communication.

Featured Work

American Tumbleweeds

2016

Set in the borderland of El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico, American Tumbleweeds tells the bittersweet story of a Mexican-American family’s struggle to stay together as tradition collides with the social upheaval of 1960s America.
This is the story of every family—for every family lives on borders of some kind—loving and clinging, wounding each other deeply while comforting each other in the soul-deep ways that only families can reach. American Tumbleweeds captures poignantly the growing pains of a young girl and of all immigrants whose dual cultural identities lend them both strength and strife.
Poised between two countries and between childhood and adulthood, thirteen-year-old Inez must choose whether to make the dangerous leap her parents never quite made, the leap faced by every new American: letting go of the old country to embrace a new destiny in the United States.
The old ways cherished by her beloved Mexican grandmother offer refuge from the turmoil her family encounters after Inez’s father gets arrested for smuggling marijuana into the U.S. But life in El Paso is far more exciting, as mini-skirts, rock music, and the sexual revolution shatter tradition on both sides of the border.

Says Sonia Manzano, "Maria" of Sesame Street: "This is an experience all Americans should know about."

Other Works

Awards and Recognition

  • Finalist for the Sarton Women's Book Awards for 2016
  • Winner of the 2024 Island Odyssey short film series, Fort Myers, FL
  • The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences - New York Chapter - 2007 Thirteen Setting the Stage: Killin' Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis
  • Nominee -The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences - New York Chapter - 2007 Thirteen Setting the Stage: Interview with David Rockwell, "Spectacle"
  • Nominee -The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences - New York Chapter - 2006 Thirteen Setting the Stage