I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.
From Daniel Alarcon
I have to really think hard about how to structure sentences, and do more mapping when I sit down to write, so it does impose a certain discipline, intellectual and linguistic.
Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.
It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.
Peru is a country where more than half the people would emigrate if given the chance. That's half the population that is willing to abandon everything they know for the uncertainty of a life in a foreign land, in another language.
How emigration is actually lived - well, this depends on many factors: education, economic station, language, where one lands, and what support network is in place at the site of arrival.
I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. I'm thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.
I began visiting Lima's prisons back in 2007, when my first novel, 'Lost City Radio,' was published in Peru.
For fiction, I'm not particularly nationalistic. I'm not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.
I think probably the thing I'm worst at is the most ephemeral stuff, like blogs. I find it really hard to write. And I'm often been asked to write columns for papers in Peru. And I can't. I would die. There's no way I could write a column.
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