Yuri Herrera

Yuri Herrera
Yuri Herrera in 2015.
Born 1970 (age 47–48)
Actopan, México
Nationality  Mexico
Alma mater Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Occupation political scientist, editor, and contemporary Mexican writer
Awards Premio Otras Voces, Otros Ámbitos

Yuri Herrera (Actopan, Mexico, 1970) is a political scientist, editor, and contemporary Mexican writer.

Biography

Yuri Herrera studied Political Science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, obtained a master's degree in Creative Writing at the University of Texas, El Paso and a PhD in Hispanic Language and Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the editor of the literary magazine El perro and a Mellow Postdoctoral Fellow at Tulane University.

His first novel, Trabajos del reino, won the 2003 Premio Binacional de Novela Border of Words made Herrera into one of the most famous writers of Latin America. The novel was also published in Spain (Periférica, 2008) and won the Premio Otras Voces, Otros Ámbitos, being considered the best work of fiction published in Spain by a jury of 100 people, including editors, journalists and cultural critics.[1]

Elena Poniatowska characterised his prose as "stunning" and the novel as an entrance "to the golden gate of Mexican literature".[2] Gabriel Wolfson describes Herrera's work as "amazing, constructed from exchanging cultured language for popular talk, emphasizing the importance of names, and using the forcefulness of certain terms while wisely omitting others".[3]

His second novel, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo (2009; translated as Signs Preceding the End of the World, And Other Stories, 2015), has led Herrera to being considered one of the most relevant young Mexican writers in the Spanish language. He has collaborated in magazines as Letras libres and El Comité 1973 among many others.

Style

Discussing the style Herrera uses in his texts, he declared: "I like to say that style isn't surface, style is a form of knowledge".[4]

Narrative

Working with space is one of the main characteristics of the works of Herrera. With respect to one of his most important works, Trabajos del reino, he explained that Ciudad Juárez is the model he used for the space, however it's of a version of Juárez modified for his convenience, given that for the reader, the model is irrelevant, the actual city is a mere block to be chiseled away at. Likewise, his novel Signs Preceding the End of the World makes no mention of any actual city, Herrera explains: "I wanted the novel not to be read only as a novel about Mexican migration, even though the scenery and setting resembles certain places of Mexico and the border between Mexico and the United States."[5]

References

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