When Valeria Luiselli moved from her native Mexico to the United States more than ten years ago, she did so with the intention of dancing in the José Limón modern dance company, based in New York.
“But I realized I didn’t have the talent to do that professionally,” he said. “So it didn’t make sense to follow that path because it wasn’t my thing.”
Along with her explorations in dance, she was close to literature; Since she was little she wrote plays and poems. So when he had to make a decision about what to do in life, writing was a natural choice.
“I started writing my first book, ‘False Papers’, when I was 20 or 21 years,” he said. “I finished it at 25, and after several rejections Sixth Floor bet on my work and that’s how it all started a bit.”
Since then, Luiselli has been considered one of the most outstanding contemporary Mexican authors. He writes in Spanish and English and has published several books that have earned him important awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, in 2019, and the Vilcek Prize in 2020. for Creative Promise in Literature, awarded by the Vilcek Foundation.
His novels and essays, among which are titles such as “Los ingravidos”, “La historia de mis ojos”, “Desierto Sonoro” and “Los lost children”, have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Luiselli, graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a doctor in comparative literature by Columbia University, attributes his penchant for writing to several factors. On the one hand, her training as a reader, and on the other, the scarce presence of female authors.
“It’s the way I know how to be in the world”, she said. “I realized that what connected me most deeply with people, with the world, with the environment, or what helped me find a certain meaning in the chaos of my experience, was writing,” says the professor. of Language and Literature from the University at Bard College.
He also recognizes that travel and a life between many countries in his childhood and adolescence – among them South Korea, South Africa, Costa Rica, India, Spain and France –, enriched his style.
“I had a life experience and vital opportunities that profoundly shaped the way I see the world”, he said.
