Mexico City – Brussels
Manuscript Seminar with Aysegül Savaş
I studied electronic engineering in college and worked in the telecom world until I quit my job in 2013 to write my first book of stories, Y sin querer te olvido. I’m fascinated by rhythm, perhaps because of my background in music —I studied piano and violin at the music conservatory in Mexico City. I have lived in Belgium, the US and Norway, and enjoy writing in both English and Spanish.
I’m interested in cognitive dissonance, how it works, especially among people in power and those close to them. The concepts of privilege and entitlement: how are they acquired and internalized? Over the past two years I have been studying the mapping of the written word (imagined or fact-based) with structures in the brain. I’ve studied their psychological affect from a social-psychology point of view. Do different brain structures get activated when we write fiction (imagined) as opposed to when we write fact-based narratives?
I’ve been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish Short Story Prizes, and received fellowships from OMI Writers (New York), Jakob Sande (Norway), Three Seas Council (Rhodes), Société des auteurs (Belgium), and Can Serrat (Cataluña). My second collection of stories, Silencios al sur, was published in 2017.
My work has appeared in Words Without Borders, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Common, The Rumpus, Jornada Semanal, Chilango and Casa del Tiempo, among others, and has partially been translated into French, Dutch and Albanian.
I’ve finished my debut novel in Spanish, Sigo llorando la nieve, and I’m in the process of finding an agent.