Join us for a unique opportunity to hear from some of Mexico’s leading voices in academia, poetry, novel and essay writing as they share their experiences living and working in New York City. Along with acclaimed writer Carmen Boullosa, authors Ximena Santaolalla, Naief Yehya, Álvaro Enrigue and Oswaldo Zavala will read their work and share their favorite Mexican films, photographs, and paintings with the audience. The group of authors will have a fascinating exchange of ideas centered around their writing practice and the way their Mexican identity permeates their work.
Carmen Boullosa is the author of a dozen volumes of poetry and has published nineteen novels, two books of essays, and ten plays (with seven of those produced and fully staged). Her work has been published by leading literary houses in Latin America and Spain and translated into ten languages. Her novel La otra mano de Lepanto (Siruela, 2005) was acknowledged by an international survey as among the top works of literature written in Spanish in the last twenty-five years. Boullosa has lectured at NYU (Chair Andrés Bello), Columbia University, Georgetown, La Sorbonne, Cambridge, UCLA, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, the Library of Congress, UNAM, and Suprema Corte de Justicia (Mexico), among other universities and institutions. She has been awarded seven NY-EMMYs, collaborated with visual artists, exhibited her art at Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, and written and produced the film Las paredes hablan (2022).
Álvaro Enrigue is a Mexican writer. His work has been awarded the Herralde, the Poniatowska and the Ciudat de Barcelona prizes, among others, and has been translated into 15 languages. He lives in New York and teaches at Hofstra University.
Ximena Santaolalla is a writer and psychotherapist for early childhood violence survivors. She has a law degree from the Center for Research and Economics Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City and a Masters in Literary Creation from New York University (NYU). Santaolalla worked as a lawyer and associate professor at CIDE and currently works as a law and psychotherapy consultant. Her first novel, A veces despierto temblando (Sometimes I Wake up Shaking) won the Mauricio Achar Award in 2021.
Ximena Santaolalla is a writer who holds a degree in Law from the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) and works as a psychotherapist for survivors of early violence. She also has a master’s degree in creative writing from New York University. She previously worked as a lawyer and associate professor at CIDE. Currently, she writes and provides independent services as a lawyer and psychotherapist. Her first novel, “A veces despierto temblando,” was the winner of the 2021 Mauricio Achar Award.
Naief Yehya is an industrial engineer, narrator, essayist and cultural critic who has lived in Brooklyn since 1992. He writes for several publications in Mexico, Spain and Latin America and has published four novels: Sanitary Works (Grijalbo, 1992), Going Home (Planeta, 1994), The truth About Life on Mars (Planeta, 1995) and Ashes and Things (Random House, 2017). Yehya has also published numerous short story collections and essays. His work has been translated to Italian, English, and French. His essay and fiction works address the impact of technology and the porn phenomenon in media, politics and culture.
Oswaldo Zavala is a journalist and professor of contemporary Latin American literature and culture at the College of Staten Island and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of La modernidad insufrible. Roberto Bolaño en los límites de la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea (2015), Volver a la modernidad. Genealogías de la literatura mexicana de fin de siglo (2017), Los cárteles no existen. Narcotráfico y cultura en México (2018), and La guerra en las palabras. Una historia intelectual del “narco” (1975-2020) (2022). He co-edited, with Viviane Mahieux, Tierras de nadie: el norte en la narrativa mexicana contemporánea (2012); with José Ramón Ruisánchez, Materias dispuestas: Juan Villoro ante la crítica (2011); and with Magdalena Perkowska, Tiranas ficciones. Poética y política de la escritura en la obra de Horacio Castellanos Moya (2018). He has published more than fifty articles on contemporary Latin American narrative, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the links between violence, culture and late capitalism.
This event is presented in partnership with The Center for Fiction
Event information
Date: Thursday, November 16th, 2023
Time: 6:00 pm
Venue: The Center for Fiction
Address: 15 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tickets: Free with RSVP