Every day in the most dangerous states of Mexico, adolescent girls and young women are abducted from bus stops and schoolyards. Some become the slave-mistresses of drug lords and their armies of assassins. This is the horrific reality behind the acclaimed novel by American-Mexican writer, Jennifer Clement,  “Prayers for the Stolen”.

Jennifer Clement, lives  in Mexico City and was president of PEN Mexico during a time when Mexico became one of the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism, and also a place where the news media routinely represses information. 

In partnership with the Center of Fiction, Celebrate Mexico Now, invites you to be part of an intimate conversation about the novel with author Jennifer Clement moderated by Mexican journalist and writer Naief Yehya. 

This event is presented in collaboration with the Center for Fiction

Jennifer Clement (born 1960) is an American-Mexican author. She addresses the crucial issues of today through the lens of fiction. Her books sit on an “iceberg of research” that brings a breathtaking realism to her stories. Jennifer Clement is also known for her beautifully written biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s partner and muse, Suzanne Mallouk. In Widow Basquiat.

In 2015, Clement was elected president of PEN International, the first woman to be elected to this role since the organization was founded in 1921. As president, she created the “PEN International Women’s Manifesto, her manifesto has since transcended PEN and has been adopted by organizations around the world.

Naief Yehya (Mexico City, born 1963) is an industrial engineer, journalist, writer, pornographographer, and cultural critic, he 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); two short stories collections: Tales of Bad Women (Plaza & Janés, 2002) and Slices (Conaculta, 2012), and the essays: The Transformed Body.