The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) belonged to the most select group of Latin American novelists. He speaks with Carmen Boullosa in this interview.

I had never conducted an interview via e-mail before my conversation with the Colombian author Laura Restrepo; therefore, I wasn’t prepared to get answers that had the quality of polished writing. 

Miguel León-Portilla is a man smiled upon by the gods, or the muses—Clio, in particular. 

Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba’s most preeminent poets, and the most internationally successful and widely translated woman writer of the post-revolutionary period. Her work speaks of African Cubans, of women, and of the people of her local Havana.

Born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1956, Graciela Sacco is both a distinguished professor of theoretical issues in 20th century Latin-American art and an artist who has literally worked in the streets. 

The magician never gives away his secrets. Tunga is content to explain his, yet the sum of these secrets remains a mystery.

Los Carpinteros are a Cuban trio who create sculptures and large-scale public works all around the world. They have established their reputation as itinerant artists who juggle cultural assumptions by making architectural forms and structures that reflect upon our constructed cityscapes. 

Beatriz Milhazes’s paintings are executed in a small studio next to Rio de Janeiro’s luscious botanical gardens.

Last November, I visited Brazil for the first the, and only then did I begin to understand the work of artists who had been familiar to me at a distance.

The audience for Gustavo Artigas’s performance The Rules of the Game at inSITE2000, a Tijuana/San Diego binational arts project, could hardly have guessed what lay in store for them.

This First Proof contains the stories “Highway Without an Ox” and “Sewer Fauna,” translated by Mary Ann Newman.

This First Proof contains Chapter 6 from Meaning to Eat translated by Mark Schafer.

This First Proof contains the poem “Lunatic Tertulia” translated by Forrest Gander.

This First Proof contains the poems “Prayer for August 21” and “The Cauldron,” translated by Mark Schafer.

This First Proof contains the story “Final Spells of Vertigo in the Vestibule” translated by Harry Morales.

This First Proof contains the story “Black Ball.”

This First Proof contains the story “A Morning Made for Happiness.”

This First Proof contains the short story “Hypertension,” translated by Beatriz Cortez.

This First Proof contains the poems “Needless Immersion” and “Mission,” translated by Zoë Anglesy.

This First Proof contains five poems, “Otra,” “I Learned To Bow” and “Seven,” translated by Esther Allen, with a reflection on the poet by Matilde Daviu.

I was up early in the morning and saw and heard the television reports as it happened. I was shocked but not surprised.

Everyone in New York has cried a wall of tears since it happened.

Every time I see a construction worker, Red Cross worker, Salvation Army captain, policeman, fireman, Sanitation Department broom pusher walk by my Greenwich Street window, I want to cheer and weep—this brave parade to the pit of doom.

Everyone in New York has cried a wall of tears since it happened. 

What do we call what happened? 

For the past year I have watched the bloodshed unfold in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Throughout the Cold War, the American people were successfully talked into conflating our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms with “free-market capitalism.” These are two different things. There is nothing in the Constitution about profits or markets or capitalism. It’s time to put an end to profiteering as the primary goal behind our foreign policy.

On Tuesday Morning, the definition of danger that I had lived with was destroyed. Up until that moment, when I saw images that I will never forget, the answer was simple: danger was in Colombia.

Everyone is so tired—everyone I speak to—so forgetful; it’s so difficult to concentrate, everyone says. 

And that’s when it happened. The fucking enemy shows up.