Granta's list of the writers they consider to be the Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists is terrific and silly for all the usual reasons. It's also a bit ridiculous that only 5 of the 22 writers listed are women, and that a full 8 of the 22 come from a single country (albeit one with a magnificent literary tradition that includes two of my all-time favorite writers.) That said, of the listed writers whose work I'm familiar with, (about half of them, plus scatterings from a few more through Etiqueta Negra,) I can't really imagine leaving any of them off the list.
The two I know best are the Peruvians: Santiago Roncagliolo and Carlos Yushimito. Roncagliolo is an established figure here, has won most of the awards there are to win, and deserved every one of them. Yushimito is just getting started, doesn't yet have anything in English (but, I suspect, soon will) and your eye, it should be on him.
November 16, 2010, 8:47 a.m.Categories: Fiction Collections, Novels, Peru, Translation
Good news from the back pages! Along with stories by my friends Matt Bell and Jim Tomlinson, among many, many other bits of work by many other fine writers, "Double Fish," a story of mine that got tapped for the 2009 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize run by The Missouri Review way back in the day, got a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best of the Small Presses (2011). Many thanks to the Pushcart people, to Speer Morgan and Evelyn Somers and Kris Somerville and the rest of the team at TMR, and to Cliff Garstang, who was kind enough to let me know about the good news in the first place.
November 10, 2010, 8:27 a.m.Categories: Fiction Collections, Litmags, Short Stories
