Omallys "Omi" Hopper
Latinos of Montclair is honored to welcome Omallys "Omi" Hopper to the VOCES speaker series for an evening of Puerto Rican culture, cuisine, and storytelling.ell your story online can make all the difference.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Omi started @cookingconomi as a way to hold onto her island roots after moving to the mainland. Today, she is one of the most beloved Latina voices in food — featured on CBS Mornings, ABC News, The Today Show, and Univision's Despierta América, and a semifinalist on FOX's Next Level Chef with Chef Gordon Ramsay.
Her debut cookbook, Cooking con Omi: A Love Letter to Puerto Rican Home Cooking (Ten Speed Press, August 11, 2026), brings together 100 classic and US-influenced Puerto Rican recipes — from asopao de gandules and mofongo to tres leches de coquito — woven through with the stories, histories, and traditions that make Puerto Rican food a celebration of identity itself.
Join us for a fireside conversation about culture, family, entrepreneurship, and the power of food to keep heritage alive across generations.
WHAT TO EXPECT
⭐ Fireside conversation with Chef Omi Hopper
⭐ Audience Q&A
⭐ Book signing
MODERATOR: Elisabet Velasquez
DETAILS
📅 Thursday, August 27, 2026
🕕 6:30 – 8:00 PM
📍 The Hub, 60 S Fullerton Ave, Montclair, NJ 07042
TICKETS
🎟️ $20 — Gen Adm
🎟️ $50 — Gen Adm + Hardcover copy of Cooking con Omi
Come for the recipes. Stay for the stories.
Brought to you by Latinos of Montclair — celebrating four years of building community, culture, and connection.
Elisabet Velasquez
Elisabet Velasquez is a Boricua poet, author, and teaching artist from Bushwick, Brooklyn, whose work centers Puerto Rican identity, working-class communities, motherhood, and the transformative power of language.
Drawing from her own experiences as a first-generation Puerto Rican teenager, GED recipient, and young mother, she writes with honesty, compassion, and a deep commitment to telling stories that are too often overlooked.
When We Make It received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Horn Book, and earned numerous honors, including selection as a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults title, an Indies Introduce and Indie Next pick, an Américas Award Commended Title, a Gotham Book Prize finalist, and an ALA Rise: A Feminist Book Project selection. The Spanish-language edition, Y Si Lo Logramos, was published in 2023.
Whether on the page or the stage, Velasquez's work celebrates survival, tenderness, community, and the radical act of imagining a future beyond what society expects. She currently lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, where she is at work on her second novel.