Mexican Author Yuri Herrera in Conversation with Daniel Alarcón
Green Apple Books on the Park | 1231 9th Avenue | San Francsico, CA
Two Voices welcomes Mexican writer Yuri Herrera in conversation with Bay Area author Daniel Alarcón at Green Apple Books on the Park. This is your chance to hear the author Francisco Goldman calls “Mexico’s greatest novelist.”
Translated by Lisa Dillman and published by And Other Stories, Signs Preceding the End of the World is Herrera’s exploration of the complicated crossings people make as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back.
We’re especially excited about this event, since the latest issue of the Two Lines journal includes an excerpt from the book.
Alarcón has said, “Signs Preceding the End of the World is a masterpiece, a haunting and moving allegory about violence and the culture built to support and celebrate that violence. Of the writers of my generation, the one I most admire is Yuri Herrera.”
Audio Table of Contents
0:00 Introductions
5:00 Yuri Herrera discusses his early novels and the publication of Signs
7:40 Herrera and Daniel Alarcón read from Signs in Spanish and in English
31:00 The role of pre-Hispanic myths in informing and shaping Signs
36:00 Herrera’s experiences with seeing the border culture and its influence on the book
38:00 How Herrera came to create the book’s protagonist, Makina
40:30 How Signs might impact the conversation around immigration, and how books in general could impact the debate
43:00 Herrera’s experiences working the his translator, Lisa Dillman, and translation questions involving specific word choices in Signs
51:00 Audience Q & A
Born in Actopan, Mexico, Yuri Herrera is the author of three novels, including Signs Preceding the End of the World, as well as the collection Ten Planets, which was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. He teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Daniel Alarcón is a Peruvian-born novelist whose books include War by Candlelight, a finalist for the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Award, and Lost City Radio, named a Best Novel of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post. He is executive producer of Radio Ambulante, a Spanish language narrative journalism podcast. In 2010 The New Yorker named him one of the Best 20 Writers Under 40, and his most recent novel, At Night We Walk in Circles, was a finalist for the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award.