Ragpicker Press

Vinicius Jatobá was selected by Granta as one of the Best of Young Brazilian Novelists in 2012. Since then he has had stories published in English, French, Spanish and German. He is also a prize-winning dramatist. In 2015 he’ll be in Paris for a year as the recipient of the prestigious Icatu Prize for Arts, where he’ll work on his new novel, Enchantment Road. His first novel, Elegy, will be published in early 2015.

‘The Big Family’ (‘A grande família’) was written especially for The Football Crónicas and is published here for the first time.

José Pérez Reyes. Asunción, Paraguay, 1972. Writer, lawyer, university professor. He has had three collections of short stories published: Ladrillos del tiempo (2002), Clonsonante (2007; his best-known work) and Asunscenarios (2012). In 2007 he was named among the Bogotá39, a Hay Festival initiative recognising the continent’s best young authors. His stories have been included in international anthologies in Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Portugal and Spain. He has had work translated into English and published by Words Without Borders in 2011. His webpage and blog can be found at joseperezreyes.blogspot.com. His work frequently combines Guaraní with Spanish: in ‘Loyalty Card’, the Guaraní words appear in italics.

‘Loyalty Card’ (‘Carnet de fiel consumidor’) was first published in Asuncenarios (Editorial Arandurá).

After living for ten years in New York, Hernán Iglesias Illa recently moved back to Buenos Aires, the city he was born and bred in. He is the author of three books, Golden Boys (2007), Miami (2010) and American Sarmiento (2013), and he has a webpage hernanii.net. In a normal week, he watches between eight and ten football matches on television.

‘San Martín de Brooklyn Eye the Play-Offs’ (‘San Martín de Brooklyn busca el repechaje’) was first published in Orsai magazine in January 2011.

Pablo Corso is thirty-three years old and lives in Buenos Aires, having spent childhood and adolescence in Bariloche, Patagonia. He is a Communications graduate, a journalist and an Independiente fan. His crónicas and articles have been published in Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Russia Beyond the Headlines, Brando and Caras & Caretas. He worked as an editor on the daily newspaper Crítica de la Argentina and the magazine El Guardián. His Twitter account is .

‘The Team That’s Always Robbed’ (‘Este equipo siempre pierde por afano’) was first published in El Guardián in February 2011.

Surya Lecona Moctezuma is a Mexican freelance journalist focused on human-rights issues and current affairs across Latin America. She loves non-fiction, crónicas and old typewriters. She has contributed to numerous publications, including Replicante, Expansión, La Otra Orilla, El Financiero and De Largo Aliento. She is part of the editorial board on the magazine Spleen! Journal and co-author of Tú y yo coincidimos en la noche terrible, a book focused on 127 journalists that have been killed or disappeared in Mexico.

‘Costa Nica: The Central American Dream’ (‘Costa Rica, Costa Nica, Costa Risueña’) was first published in March 2013 in Replicante.

Marco Avilés. Peru, 1978. Journalist and editor. He is content manager at Cometa, an enterprise dedicated to telling stories in different settings and locations (cometa.pe). He has had one book published, Día de visita (Libros del KO, Spain), and he previously edited the crónicas magazine Etiqueta Negra. He lives in Lima with his girlfriend, two ginger cats and a hairless dog. His writing can be found and followed at www.marcoaviles.com.

‘The Goal-Begetting Women of the Andes’ (‘Las bombarderas de los Andes’) was first published in February 2007 in Etiqueta Negra.

Juan Pablo Meneses. Santiago de Chile, 1969. Writer and journalist. He is the author of several books, including Equipaje de mano (2003), La vida de una vaca (2008) and Niños futbolistas (2013). He studied journalism in Santiago and in Barcelona. In Mexico he edited Generación ¡Bang! (2012), an anthology of young narco-crónica writers, while in Buenos Aires he founded the Portable Journalism School (Escuela de Periodismo Portátil). He currently lives in Chile, where he is the editor of the daily hoyxhoy and teaches at Universidad de Chile.

‘A Grenade for River Plate’ (‘Una granada para River Plate’) was first published in Equipaje de mano in 2003.

Álex Ayala Ugarte is a Spaniard by birth, a Bolivian by heart and a stutterer by vocation. He was the Sunday editor of the Bolivian newspaper La Razón, the creative non-fiction editor of the weekly Pulso and founder of Pie Izquierdo, the first non-fiction magazine in Bolivia. He contributes to publications such as Etiqueta Negra, Paula, Virginia Quarterly Review, Séptimo Sentido, Frontera D and Internazionale. He has taken part in crónica workshops alongside journalists such as Alberto Salcedo, Francisco Goldman, Jon Lee Anderson and Alma Guillermoprieto. He won the National Journalism Prize in Bolivia in 2008. He was part of the anthology of Bolivian crónicas, Bolivia a toda costa: Crónicas de un país de ficción, and his first book, Los mercaderes del Che, was recently published in Bolivia and Spain.

‘Football’s Strangest Kidnapping’ (‘El secuestro más extraño del fútbol’) was first published in the Bolivian magazine El Día D and subsequently published in the following magazines: Sole (Colombia), Emeequis (Mexico), Soho (Argentinian edition), Séptimo Sentido (El Salvador).

Federico Vegas (Caracas,1950) completed his degree in architecture from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) in 1976. He has taught architectural design in the UCV, design at Princeton University (1983) and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University (1995). He has published the following books on architecture: El continente de papel (1984); Pueblos. Venezuela 1979-1984 (1986); Venezuelan Vernacular (1985);and La Vega, una casa colonial (1988). In the 1990s he began publishing collections of short stories: El borrador (1996); Amores y castigos (1998); Los traumatólogos de Kosovo (2002); La carpa y otros cuentos (2009); Los peores de la clase (2011); La nostalgia esférica (2014). He has also published six novels: Prima lejana (1999); Falke (2005); Historia de una segunda vez (2006); Miedo, pudor y deleite (2008); Sumario (2010); Los Incurables (2012); El buen esposo (2013). His newspaper pieces and essays are collected in the books La ciudad sin lengua (2001); La ciudad y el deseo (2007); and Ciudad vagabunda (2014).

‘The Tent’ was originally published as ‘La carpa’ in the collection of short stories La Carpa y otros cuentos (Caracas: Alfaguara, 2009). 

Héctor Torres (Caracas, 1968)is a narrator and literary promoter. He is the author of the short-story books El amor en tres platos (2007) and El regalo de Pandora (2011), as well as of the novel La huella del bisonte (2008), which featured among the finalists of the 2006 Adriano González León Biennial, and of the crónica collections Caracas muerde (2012) and Objetos no declarados (2014). Formerly the editor of the website www.ficcionbreve.org he was also the creator of the Critics’ Award to Best Novel of the Year, awarded by said portal. His texts have been included in a number of anthologies, and he has been a contributor to various print and online publications. He has taken part in workshops with the writers Santiago Gamboa, Leila Guerriero and Alberto Salcedo Ramos. Presently he is a regular contributor in the magazine Clímax and the portal El Cambur. He delivers literary workshops and since 2006 is the coordinator of the Short Story Prize for Young Authors of the Policlínica Metropolitana.

‘What do They Call Those Born in Chivacoa’ first appeared as ‘Como se les llama los que nacen en Chivacoa’ in Caracas muerde (Caracas: Punto Cero, 2012).

Jesús Miguel Soto (Caracas, 1981) read media and communication as well as letters (Letras) at the Central University of Venezuela. He has experience working as a lecturer, copy editor and editor. He has published the collection of short stories Perdidos en Frog and the novel La máscara de cuero. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the 64th edition of the yearly short story competition by El Nacional, the VII National Short Story Award organised by the Association of Venezuelan Authors and Composers (SACVEN) and the XXIII edition of the Literary Competition Juana Santacruz (Mexico). His stories have appeared in anthologies, such as Joven narrativa venezolana II and De qué va el cuento. Antología del relato venezolano 2000-2012.

Jesús has just been named one of the Bogotá39 for 2017: the 39 best Latin American writers under 39.

‘One of Many Potential Short Cuts’ was originally published as ‘Uno de muchos posibles atajos’ in the collection of short stories Perdidos en Frog (Caracas: Lugar Común, 2012).

Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles(Caracas, 1977) is the author of the novels Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul (2010), winner of the Ibero-American Novel Prize Arturo Uslar Pietri; Transilvania, unplugged (2011); Liubliana (2012), winner of the International Literary Prize Letras del Bicentenario Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and of Venezuela’s Critics’ Prize 2012; Jezabel (2013), and Julián (2014). He holds undergraduate degrees in letters (Letras) from the Catholic University Andrés Bello, and in philosophy from the Central University of Venezuela; he also holds master’s degrees in Latin American studies from the Autonomous University of Madrid and in literary studies from the Complutense University of Madrid.

‘Ljubljana’ is an excerpt from the prologue of the novel Liubliana (Caracas: Ediciones B/Bruguera, 2012).

Miguel Hidalgo Prince (Caracas, 1984) completed his undergraduate degree in letters (Letras) from the Central University of Venezuela. He is the author of the collection of short stories Todas las batallas perdidas, published in 2012 by BID & Co and is presently working on a new collection.

‘Half Way There’ was first published as ‘A medio camino’ by the Venezuelan portal Prodavinci.com. 

Leonardo Padrón (Caracas, 1959), poet, chronicler, columnist, scriptwriter for film and television. He is the author of the poetry collections La orilla encendida; Balada; Tatuaje; Boulevard; El amor tóxico; Los materiales humanos,and Métodos de la Lluvia. His first book of crónicas, Kilómetro Cero, sold over twenty thousand copies and was published in three different editions. In 2015 he published his new collection of crónicas, Se busca un país. He has been recognised with the Poetry Prize by the Catholic University Andrés Bello, the Essay Prize Fundarte, the Municipal Prize for Cinema, the National Association of Cinematographic Authors Award, and the Fundavisual Latina Prize. He was a member of the poetry group Guaire, which had a decisive influence on the Venezuelan literary scene in the eighties, before becoming one of the most successful writers in the television industry in Venezuela, earning more than twenty-five different awards. Over the past decade he has made a considerable impression on the air waves with his radio show Los Imposibles, which has been running for seven consecutive seasons and has been turned into the publishing best-seller Los Imposibles, conversaciones al borde de un micrófono (volumes 1-7). He is one of the most known and respected writers in the country and has been translated to a number of languages.

‘Variations on Goodbye’ was published as ‘Formas del adiós’ by El Nacional newspaper in February 2014.

Willy McKey (Caracas, 1980), poet, cultural agitator, editor and educator specialised in non-fiction and cultural journalism. He is an adviser and analyst of political semiotics and the editor of Newsweek, the cultural magazine of the Venezuelan online portal Prodavinci. He has been awarded the 2007 Fundarte Poetry Prize for his collection Vocado de orfandad and the 2009 National Book Award for the poetry magazine El Salmón - Revista de Poesía. He is the author of the poetic-performative publishing experiences Paisajeno and Nuestra Señora del Jabillo. 

‘A Chronicle of Scarcity’ was published as ‘Una crónica de la escacez’ by Prodavinci on May 27 2013.

Carolina Lozada(Venezuela, 1974), writer. Holds an undergraduate degree in letters (Letras) from the University of the Andes (Mérida, Venezuela). She is the author of El cuarto del loco (2014); La culpa es del porno (2013); La vida de los mismos (2011); Los cuentos de Natalia (2010); and Memorias de azotea (2007).

‘The Villagers’ was originally published as ‘Los pobladores’ and in 2014 won the sixty-ninth edition of the yearly short-story competition of the daily Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional.​

Eduardo Liendo (Caracas, 1941) is a novelist and short-story writer. He attended the secondary school Luis Espelozín in Caracas and studied at the Moscow Institute of Social Studies (1967-69) but his literary training came primarily as a voracious reader during his years as a political prisoner in the colonial Fortín El Vigía and the Island of Tacarigua (1962-67). He has worked as librarian, promoter and director of the Cultural Extension of the Venezuelan National Library (1976-2001), conducted the narrative workshop of the School of Letters of the Catholic University Andrés Bello (1990-2005), was coordinator of the narrative workshop of the Centre for Latin American Studies Rómulo Gallegos on two occasions, and was guest lecturer at the University of Colorado Boulder (1996). He has been juror in several domestic and international literary competitions, and in 2015 he was made Doctor of Literature Honoris Causa by the Catholic University Cecilio Acosta of Maracaibo. He is the author of El mago de la cara de vidrio (1973); Los topos (1975); Mascarada (1978); Los platos del diablo (1985, winner of the Municipal Prize for Literature); El cocodrilo rojo (short stories, 1987); Si yo fuera Pedro Infante (1989, winner of the National Council of Culture Award the following year); Diario del enano (1995); El round del olvido (2002, winner of the Municipal Prize for Literature); Las kuitas del hombre mosca (2005); Contraespejismo (2007); El último fantasma (2008); En torno al oficio de escritor (essay, 2014); Contigo en la distancia (2014).

‘Patriotic Stuff’ is an extract of the novel Las Kuitas del hombre mosca (Caracas: Alfaguara, Editorial Santillana, 2010).

Gisela Kozak Rovero (Venezuela, 1963) is a novelist, short-story writer, essayist and academic researcher. She holds a PhD and undergraduate degree in letters (Letras) and is a lecturer at the Central University of Venezuela. Her books include Venezuela, el país que siempre nace; Ni tan chéveres ni tan iguales: el cheverismo venezolano y otras formas del disimulo; En rojo; Todas las lunas; Latidos de Caracas; Literatura asediada; Rebelión en el Caribe Hispánico; Pecados de la capital; La catástrofe imaginaria. She has published opinion pieces in the national press and papers in specialised academic publications. She has taken part in international events, conducted seminars and delivered conferences at Stanford University, the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO, Dominican Republic), the Université de Paris VIII and Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma (UNAM). She has also been a guest researcher of the DADD at the Latin American Institute of Berlin. Her critical and creative writing has been recognised with a number of domestic and international awards.

‘Passion’ was originally published as ‘La pasión’ in the collection of short stories En rojo (Caracas: Editorial Alfa, 2011).

Miguel Gomes (1964) is the author of, among others, the works of fiction Visión memorable (1987); De fantasmas y destierros (2003); Un fantasma portugués (2004); Viviana y otras historias del cuerpo (2006); Viudos, sirenas y libertinos (2008); El hijo y la zorra (2010); and Julieta en su castillo (2012). He has been the recipient of the Caracas Municipal Prize for Literature for Un fantasma portugués and has twice won the yearly short story prize awarded by the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional. As a critic he has written extensively about the essay in Latin American and about various poets and fiction writers. He studied in the University of Coimbra (Portugal), the Central University of Venezuela, and completed his PhD at StonyBrookUniversity in New York. Since 1989 he lives in the USA, and currently is a lecturer at the University of Connecticut.

 ‘Christina Cries at Three O’Clock’ won the 2010 El Nacional short story prize and was published as ‘Lorena llora a las tres’ in the collection Julieta en su castillo (Caracas: Artesano Editores, 2012).

Victoria de Stefano (Rimini, Italy, 1940) read philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). She worked in the university’s Institute of Philosophy and taught aesthetics, contemporary philosophy and theory of dramatic structures in the UCV’s faculties of Philosophy and Art. She is the author of the novels El desolvido (1970), La noche llama a la noche (1985), El lugar del escritor (1992), Cabo de vida (Planeta, 1994), Historias de la marcha a pie (1997), which merited her the Municipal Prize for Best Novel and was a finalist of the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, Lluvia (2002), Pedir demasiado (2004), and Paleografías, (2010), which earned her the 2012 Critics’ Award. She is also the author of the essays Poesía y modernidad, Baudelaire, (1984), winner of the Municipal Prize for Best Essay in 1984, and La refiguración del viaje (2005).

‘On a Bad Day in 1979’ is an extract of her novel Historias de la marcha a pie (Caracas: Todtmann Editores, 1997; El otro, el mismo, 2005).

Doménico Chiappe (Peru, 1970) grew up in Venezuela, where his family moved in 1974. He has lived in Madrid since 2002. He holds a doctorate in humanities from Madrid’s Universidad Carlos III, and focused his thesis multimedia narrative. He has published the novels Tiempo de encierro (2013) and Entrevista a Mailer Daemon (2007), the short-story book Los muros (2011), the collection of crónicas Cédula de identidad (2014) and the multimedia works ‘Hotel Minotauro’ (2013-2015) and ‘Tierra de extracción; (1996-2007). As a researcher he focuses on journalism, photography and digital literature. He has published the essay Tan real como la ficción. Herramientas narrativas en periodismo (Laertes, 2010) and is working on La visión multimedia. Apuntes para una narrativa electrónica (2015-2016). In Venezuela he was cofounder of the newspaper TalCual and the magazine Primicia, and he worked in El Nacional. He is a contributor for the magazines El Estado Mental, ‘Fronterad’ and Letras Libres. He works as publishing coordinator and teaches journalism at www.domenicochiappe.com.

‘The Long Road to Nowhere’ first appeared as ‘Largo viaje inmóvil’ in Cédula de identidad (Caracas: La Guaya, 2014) later published as Largo viaje inmóvil. Crónicas de Venezuela (Madrid: Círculo de Tiza, 2016).

Rodrigo Blanco Calderón (Caracas, 1981) is a writer, editor and university lecturer. He has published the short-story collections Una larga fila de hombres(2005),Los Invencibles(2007) andLas rayas(2011). His short stories have earned him recognition both in Venezuela and abroad. In 2007 he was selected for the group Bogotá39, which gathered the best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine. In 2013 he was guest author in the international writing programme of the University of Iowa. In 2014 his short story ‘Emunctories’ was included in issue number forty-six of McSweeney’s magazine, titled Thirteen Crime Stories from Latin America. Presently he is completing a doctorate in linguistic and literary studies at the Université Paris XIII. The Night (2016) is his first novel.

‘Clown’ was first published as ‘Payaso’ in Las rayas (Caracas: Punto Cero, 2011).

Christina MacSweeney'stranslations of Valeria Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd (Coffee House Press, 2012), Sidewalks (Coffee House Press, 2013) and The Story of my Teeth (Granta, 2015) have received critical acclaim. Her work has appeared on such platforms as Words without Borders, McSweeney’s, Quarterly Conversation, A Public Space and Litro Magazine, plus the anthology México20 (Pushkin Press, 2015), and she contributed an introductory text on Mexican literature for the LBF Market Focus Guide, 2015. Her translations of Daniel Saldaña París’s Among Strange Victims and Eduardo Rabasa’s A Zero Sum Game are forthcoming from Coffee House Press and Deep Vellum in 2016.

For Crude Words, Christina translted the chapter 'A Bad Day in 1979', taken from Victoria de Stefano's novel Historias de la marcha a pie.

Ollie Brock has translated authors such as Isabel Allende and Javier Montes, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists. His reviews have appeared in the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, Modern Poetry in Translation and TIME International. He lives and works at the London Buddhist Centre, where he is training to join the Triratna Buddhist Order.

For Crude Words, Ollie translated ‘The Tent’ by Federico Vegas.

Katie Brown has an unhealthy obsession with Venezuelan literature. She has recently completed a PhD on ‘The Contested Values of Literature in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’ at King’s College London, and now teaches Spanish and Latin American culture at the University of Bristol. She runs www.venezuelanliterature.co.uk, posting news, information about published translations and her own translations, and has also contributed to the Palabras Errantes translation project.

Katie is one of the co-editors of Crude Words.

For Crude Words, Katie translated ‘Clown’ by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, ‘Blanes’ by Héctor Concari, ‘The Body’ by Liliana Lara, ‘The Villagers’ by Carolina Lozada, an excerpt from Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez’s novel The Briefcases, and ‘Literary Solutions to the Death of My Mother-in-Law’ by Slavko Zupcic.

Robin Patterson translates from Portuguese and is currently working on his first book-length translation, Nosso Musseque by the Angolan novelist José Luandino Vieira, to be published by Dedalus Books. He is a member of the And Other Stories Portuguese reading group and has translated samples for a number of publishers, authors and literary agencies. Robin has participated in several literary translation summer schools and was mentored by Margaret Jull Costa as part of the British Centre for Literary Translation’s 2013 mentorship programme. He once lived with a couple of ardent Arsenal fans in the shadows of the old Highbury stadium and so considers himself an honorary Gooner, at least when they’re winning.

Robin Patterson translated ‘Congressman Romário: Big Fish in the Aquarium’ (‘Peixe no aquário’) by Clara Becker for The Football Crónicas.

After graduating in Spanish and French, Chris Lloyd lived in Catalonia for over twenty years, besides brief spells in Bilbao and Madrid, where he worked as a teacher, in ELT publishing and as a translator. Now living in Wales, he works as a freelance translator and writer. He translates mainly academic and arts texts and has written a number of travel books for Rough Guides. He now writes the Elisenda Domènech series of crime novels set in Catalonia, the first of which, City of Good Death, was published in 2015.

For Crude Words, Chris translated an excerpt from Francisco Suniaga’s novel The Other Island.

For The Football Crónicas, Chris translated ‘Football’s Strangest Kidnapping’ by Álex Ayala Ugarte.

Rosalind Harvey’s translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos’s debut novel Down the Rabbit Hole was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Oxford-Weidenfeld prize. Her co-translation of Enrique Vila-Matas’s Dublinesque was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction prize and has been longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC award. Her latest translation is Villalobos’s Quesadillas, with And Other Stories. She lives in Bristol and organises translation-related events around the country, and tries to avoid football as much as possible.

Rosalind Harvey translated ‘Queens Football’ (‘El fútbol de Las Regias’) by Alberto Salcedo Ramos for The Football Crónicas.

Ruth Clarke is a translator working from Spanish, French, and Italian into English. She holds a degree in modern European languages from the University of Durham and a master’s in translation studies from the University of Sheffield. Ruth has translated work by authors from Benin to Venezuela, and her translation of Cristina Caboni’s best-selling debut novel The Secret Ways of Perfume will be published in 2016.

For Crude Words, Ruth translated ‘Christina Cries at Three O’clock’ by Miguel Gomes and ‘Variations on Goodbye’ by Leonardo Padrón.

For The Football Crónicas, Ruth translated ‘Costa Nica: The Central American Dream’ by Surya Lecona Moctezuma.