The Writing University's Live Discussion Series continued Wednesday, 10/13, with a session featuring Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon and Salvadorean author, Horacio Castellanos Moya. Mr. Castellanos Moya is a 2010 Ida Beam Distinguished Professor. The discussion took place in Spanish at 3:30 p.m. (Central Time). A link to the archived audio transcript will be available after the session.
This event is part of an ongoing effort by the IWP to cultivate a dynamic on-line community. We thank you for taking part!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Born in Honduras in 1957, Horacio Castellanos Moya became famous in 1997 with the publication of, El asco, a fame that also sent him into the exile of his present day. During the civil war in El Salvador (1979-1992), Moya twice fled his country, the first time for Canada, where he briefly studied history at York University in Toronto, and the second time for Mexico City, where he worked as a journalist for ten years and first gained notoriety as a writer. His first novel, La diáspora, which concerns the struggles of the exiles from the Salvadoran Civil War, won the Premio Nacional de la Novela, awarded by the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas", in 1988. In total, Moya is the author of nine novels and five books of short stories that have made him an important literary figure in the Spanish-speaking world. His novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Hebrew and Serbian, and, in the last two years, have begun to appear in English. New Directions published Senselessness in 2008 and She-Devil in the Mirror in 2009, and Biblioasis published Dance with Snakes in 2009 as well. After spending two years in Frankfurt, he is currently living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a part of the City of Asylum project there as a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and is on the jury for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Eduardo Halfon was born in 1971 in Guatemala City. He studied Industrial Engineering in North Carolina State University, and then was Literature Professor at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala. He has published Esto no es una pipa, Saturno (Alfaguara 2003, Punto de Lectura 2007), De cabo roto (Littera Books 2003), El ángel literario (Anagrama 2004, Semifinalist of the Herralde Prize for Novel), Siete minutos de desasosiego (Panamericana Editorial 2007), Clases de hebreo (AMG 2008), Clases de dibujo (AMG 2009, XV Café Bretón y Bodegas Olarra Literary Prize), El boxeador polaco (Pre-Textos 2008) and La pirueta (Pre-Textos 2010, Winner of the José María de Pereda Priza for Short Novel). Parts of his work have been translated into Serbian, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, and English. In 2007 he was named one of the best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogotá.