I collect mostly novels and collections of short stories, but the collection also includes poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, some zines, and a range of ephemera, such as bookmarks from Latin American bookstores. The categories are subjective and flexible-indeed, it’s cause for celebration when the last category no longer applies! (I’m always happy when a book finds a translator). I’ve organized my collecting around small press, experimental, and untranslated Latin American literature. Please introduce us to your book collection.

Still a student! I’ll be a “PhD candidate” by the summer. Currently I’m a third-year PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, pursuing a concentration in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies.

I earned a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Tulane University. My undergraduate degree is in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies.

Three years ago, I returned to Durham for doctoral studies. I attended Grinnell College in Iowa, and then lived for a few years each in Seattle and New Orleans. I spent my first four years in Chapel Hill, where my mom was a finishing her PhD, before my family moved to Lewisburg, a small town in central Pennsylvania. This is her first full-length work to appear in English.Our Bright Young Collectors series continues today with Joe Hiller of North Carolina, one of the winners of the 2021 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest. Her stories have appeared in anthologies in French, English, Chinese, Hebrew, and Serbo-Croatian.

Her other books include the short story collections, Maldito corazón, Zoom, Fuga permanente, and Álbum de familia her novels in Spanish include Body Time, Poso Wells, and Humo. Her literary honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006 member of Bogotá 39, a 2007 selection of the most important up-and-coming writers in Latin America in the post-Boom generation one of five finalists for the 2015 Premio Hispanoamericano de Cuento Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) for her story collection La muerte silba un blues and winner of several prizes for critical essays on literature and film. She received a PhD at Tulane University and holds a Master's degree in Latin American Literature from Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. Gabriela Alemán, based in Quito, Ecuador, has played professional basketball in Switzerland and Paraguay and has worked as a waitress, administrator, translator, radio scriptwriter, and film studies professor.

Álbum de familia by Gabriela Alemán