Gracias, Words whitout Borders

In 1927, the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga—often compared to Poe for his horror stories and to Kipling for his stories of the jungle—left us his famous “Decálogo para el perfecto cuentista” (translated most frequently as “Ten Commandments for the Perfect Storyteller”). There, he offers a series of essential recommendations for anyone wishing to become an expert in the art of the short story. His list begins not with formal elements or questions of technique but rather with a call to search for a guide or mentor: “Believe in your teacher as in God himself,” he declares, and then continues to mention (in this order) his own literary gods: Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chekhov. With this same fervor, this faith in finding a teacher, writers in Buenos Aires seek out a writing workshop. These young writers are clearly also motivated by the belief that studying craft and process will improve their writing, but they also intuit, even without much knowledge of the literary universe into which they’re setting out, that their future as writers will largely depend on the person who runs their workshop.

Read more:

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/a-brief-history-of-the-argentine-writing-workshop-ana-quiroga

UB: Feria del Libro 2018

Gracias, Casa de las Américas

En 2017, en homenaje a los 50 años de Cien años de soledad, la revista Casa de las Américas dedicó su número 287 al aniversario de la novela que disparó el boom latinoamericano. Bajo la consigna de por qué le recomendarías a alguien que leyese Cien años de soledad, la Casa convocó a varios escritores para que respondiéramos a esa pregunta.

De regreso de mis vacaciones, me encuentro con que me han enviado a casa la preciosa edición. Gracias, en las personas de Roberto Fernandez Retamar y Jorge Fornet, a todos los que llevan adelante esta revista, que ya es magnífica historia.

¿Por qué recomendarías a un lector de hoy la lectura de Cien años de soledad?

Gabriel García Márquez contó que, a principios de 1965, iba con su mujer Mercedes y sus dos hijos pequeños para un fin de semana en Acapulco cuando se sintió fulminado por un cataclismo del alma, tan intenso y tan arrasador,