6 Guatemalan Authors You Should Know

wingston gonzalez
Photo: Carsten Meltendorf

Wingston González (he/him) is a textual producer. A member of the literary collective/show La Retaguardia, González is the author of Espuma sobre las piedras (2014), featuring choreography by Alejandra Garavito; No Budu Please (2018); and Qué haré con mi lugar en el cielo (2019), written in collaboration with Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa and translated into English by Urayoán Noel. In 2015, he was awarded the Premio Mesoamericano de Poesía Luis Cardoza y Aragón for his poetry collection traslaciones (2015). In addition to poetry, he has worked in the fields of dance, visual arts, music, and artistic action. He currently resides in Guatemala City.

Jennifer De Leon (she/her) is the author of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From (2020) and the essay collection White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing (2021). She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from UMASS-Boston. De Leon’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and Guernica. A recipient of the Juniper Prize, De Leon currently works as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University and as a faculty member in the MFA program at Bay Path University.

Manuel Gabriel Tzoc Bucup (they/them) is a queer, Indigenous poet and visual artist. Born in 1982, they are the author of the poetry collection Esco-p(o)etas para una muerte en ver(sos) b-a…l…a (2006), as well as the book-objects Polen (2014), Cuerpo de Niño Triste (2015), and Constante huida: crimen de un corazón que no recuerdo y/o pronunciamientos del habla tartamuda (2016). Their craft focuses on re-signifying objects through written poetry, exploring all of the book’s aesthetic possibilities and giving it the status of a visual object. They are co-editor of La Maleta Ilegal Press and are based out of Guatemala City.

Alan Mills (he/him) is the author of the micro-novel Síncopes (2007) and the nonfiction work Hacking Coyote (2017). A poet, writer, and literary researcher, Mills was named as one of the Bogota39 (a list of the most promising young writers in Latin America) in 2017. Most of his work explores the links between literature, digital technologies, ethnicity, spirituality, and virtual identities, and has been translated into German, French, English, Portuguese, Italian, and Czech. He is a German Academic Exchange Service fellow and is currently completing a doctoral thesis about indigenist science fiction in contemporary Latin American literature in Berlin.

Claudia D. Hernández (she/her) is a poet, editor, photographer, and bilingual educator. The author of Knitting the Fog (2019), Hernández was a finalist for the 2020 Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction and the winner of the 2018 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize, a prize that honors a debut work of prose by a woman or nonbinary author of color. She frequently writes stories and poetry in Spanish, English, and sometimes weaves in Poqomchi’, an indigenous language of her Mayan heritage. Hernández is also the editor of the anthology Women, Mujeres, Ixoq: Revolutionary Visions (2017). She lives in Los Angeles.

Ariel Francisco Henriquez Cos (he/him) is a poet and translator. Born to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he holds an MFA from Florida International University and has authored multiple collections, such as All My Heroes Are Broke (2017) and A Sinking Ship Is Still a Ship (2020). He is also the translator of Carolina Sanchez’s book Viaje/Voyage (2020). His work has been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and Guernica, among others. He was named as one of “Five Florida Writers to Watch” in 2019 by the Miami New Times and is currently completing a masters in literary translation in Brooklyn.
5/30/2021
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