Cátedra José Emilio Pacheco 2024: Yuri Herrera

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese (SPAP) at the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (SLLC) of the University of Maryland in College Park created the José Emilio Pacheco Distinguished Lecture Series: Cátedra José Emilio Pacheco in collaboration with the Mexican Cultural Institute back in 2016 as a forum for exceptionally great writers, thinkers, philosophers, and scholars who articulate their creative work around Mexico and Latin American literary and cultural traditions, and on the aesthetic, ethical, and human values that José Emilio Pacheco championed.

Pacheco was a Distinguished University Professor at Maryland from 1984 to 2006, and he taught and trained a long list of prominent Mexican writers and intellectuals and an international cohort of students.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 6:00PM
Mexican Cultural Institute 

Public Lecture in Spanish with Yuri Herrera: "Juárez en Nueva Orleans". Discover the time Mexican President Benito Juárez spent in New Orleans and how is still relative after over 150 years later. Reception to follow. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Yuri Herrera (Actopan, Hidalgo, México, 1970) received his BA in Political Science from UNAM, MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. His first novel Trabajos del reino (Kingdom Cons), won the Premio Binacional de Novela Joven in 2003 and received the “Otras voces, otros ámbitos” prize for the best novel published in Spain in 2008. His second novel, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo (Signs Preceding the End of the World), was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. His third novel is La transmigración de los cuerpos (Transmigration of Bodies). All three novels have been translated into multiple languages and published in English by the British publisher And Other Stories. He has also published two children’s books in México: ¡Éste es mi nahual! and Los ojos de Lía.

In 2016, he shared the Best Translated Book Award with translator Lisa Dillman for the translation of Signs Preceding the End of the World. The same year, Rice University and Literal Publishing published Talud, a collection of his short stories. He also received the Anna Seghers Prize from the Academy of Arts of Berlin in 2016 for his body of work. His latest books include the historical narrative A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, the sci-fi short stories collection Ten Planets, and the novel Season of the Swamp. He has taught literary theory, creative writing, and Latin American literature at the Universidad Iberoamericana in México and at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, before joining Tulane University, where he is professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department.