Alicia Valdes-Rodriguez was known in her short career at the L.A. Times for penning a hilarious piece on being a Latina visitor to Cuba and encountering Woody Harrelson, and for submitting a 3,400-word resignation letter in which she slammed pretty much everybody. She showed them, getting a $475,000 deal for her first novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, reportedly written in an Albuquerque coffee house. Of the LAT, she says now in the Miami Herald (via Romenesko): "It was like any bad relationship...we just weren't a good match.''

[Update: Los Angeles blogger Luke Ford digs into his Valdes-Rodriguez archive.]