2 pm to 4 pm
Join Pablo Brescia as he reads from his book La derrota de lo real/The Defeat of the Real (Miami and Mexico, 2017) and Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez as he reads from his book En el Lost y Found (2016).
Pablo Brescia makes us see that what is created by literature can be, at the same time, fictional and present within us. Some stories deconstruct reality, others assemble worlds playing with detective fiction or science fiction; some are ironic, others satiric; some refer back to Wilcock and Bolaño, others to Borges. In these stories, Brescia’s narrative pulse proves to be necessary by helping us capture reality’s insane ways.
Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is an unrepentant border crosser, ex-dj, Xicano writer, painter, and academic. An Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Hispanic Southwest Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico, he is recently back in New Mexico after a year as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Ankara, Turkey. He has also taught and lectured at universities across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. A member of the research group UC-Mexicanistas.
Pablo Brescia was born in Buenos Aires and has lived in the United States since 1986. He has published three books of short stories: La derrota de lo real/The Defeat of the Real (Miami and Mexico, 2017), Fuera de Lugar/Out of Place (Peru, 2012/Mexico, 2013) and La apariencia de las cosas/The Appearance of Things (México, 1997), and a book of hybrid texts No hay tiempo para la poesía/NoTime for Poetry (Buenos Aires, 2011), with the pen name Harry Bimer. Some of his stories are collected in ESC (Miami, 2013) and Gente ordinaria/Ordinary People (Mexico, 2014). His blog is Preferiría (no) hacerlo/I Would Prefer (Not) To (http://pablobrescia.blogspot.com). He teaches Latin American Literature at the University of South Florida.
Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is the author of four collections of short stories, Algún día te cuento las cosas que he visto (2012), Luego el silencio (2014), One Day I’ll Tell You the Things I’ve Seen (2015), and En el Lost y Found (2016). His most recent work is a co-edited anthology of scholarly writing, The Latino/a Midwest Reader. Widely published in Spanish, his literary work has appeared in anthologies and literary journals in Spain, Italy, Latin America and the United States. He has discussed his work with Eduardo Halfón and Daniel Alarcón in The Believer, and with Edmundo Paz Soldán and Santiago Roncagliolo in The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. His stories bear witness to the lives of Latinas/os who travel from California to Mexico City, from Madrid to Istanbul. The stories are populated by wanderers building a home out of movement and living through the cultural consequences of migration. Commenting on his writing, Junot Díaz has said “Santiago Vaquera is literary lightning. He impresses, he illuminates, and when he is at his best you are left shaken, in awe.
Free public event