June 2009
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Catarina Over the Sea
Meet wonderful Portugese singer Catarina dos Santos, who just released her debut album “No Balanço do Mar.” [VIDEO] [Sorry, no music in the interview, but you can listen here.]
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A Swinging Goodbye
Before the Daily News’ Viva New York section entered zombie mode by losing one of its key writer/editors, Carlos Rodríguez, and having its webpage frozen, I got one article published: an interview with Chilean jazz singer extraordinaire, Claudia Acuña.
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More than boom-ch-boom-chick
Relishing the rich and varied canon of Latin music, I could not believe my bad luck when I moved to New York in 2004 and all you could hear blasting from cars, delis and bars was Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” Not only was it the dance-du-jour, ready to spread like fire throughout the continent, but somehow…
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Álvaro Enrigue and the Problem of Literality
The Dalkey Archive Press recently published The Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction, a stunning bilingual collection of 16 short stories by writers born after 1945. Álvaro Enrigue contributed with “On the Death of the Author,” which begins as an anecdote —a writer trying to tell the story of the last pure American Indian—, and seems…
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Lemus & Boullosa
A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune of interviewing Mexican literary critic Rafael Lemus and Mexican-cum-New-Yorker writer Carmen Boullosa. Among other thoughtful things, Lemus —who had recently published a collection of short stories— said he saw no difference between writing fiction and book reviews: just a leap from text form to another. Boullosa,…
José Manuel Simián 