Lina Meruane

Lina Meruane is a writer and professor of creative writing and Latin American literature and culture at New York University. She started out in the world of literature as a storyteller and cultural journalist. In 1997, she received a writing scholarship from the Chilean National Fund for the Development of Culture and the Arts, and in 1998 she published Las infantas (Eterna Cadencia, 2011), which was highly acclaimed by Chilean critics. She later earned a PhD in Latin American literature from New York University; in 2004 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the novel Fruta Podrida (Fondo de cultura económica Chile, 2007), and in 2010, the U.S. government’s National Endowment for the Arts grant for Sangre en el ojo (Random House, 2012).

Meruane has received numerous awards and recognitions, such as the Anna Seghers Prize (2011) and the 20th Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (2012). She is also the founder and director of Brutas Editoras, a now-defunct independent label that operated between Santiago de Chile and Manhattan. In addition to collections of short stories and novels, she has written a number of non-fiction books, including Volverse palestina/ Palestina en pedazos (Random House, 2014/2021), a literary memoir about her Palestinian origins, and the feminist pamphlet Contra los hijos (Literatura Random House, 2018). Her work has been translated into twelve languages.