Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa, more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and former politician. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." He also won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award, the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes International Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie française.
Carlos Fuentes Macías was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), Terra Nostra (1975), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, The New York Times described Fuentes as "one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world" and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the "explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s", while The Guardian called him "Mexico's most celebrated novelist". His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor (1999). He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Mexican literature stands as one of the most prolific and influential within Spanish-language literary traditions, alongside those of Spain and Argentina. This rich and diverse tradition spans centuries, encompassing a wide array of genres, themes, and voices that reflect the complexities of Mexican society and culture. From ancient indigenous myths to contemporary urban narratives, Mexican literature serves as a poignant reflection of the nation's essence, inviting readers to explore its rich history, diverse culture, and collective aspirations.
Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of nine months during 1948, he governed as the first freely elected president in Venezuela's history. He was removed from power by military officers in the 1948 Venezuelan coup.
The Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize was created on 6 August 1964 by a presidential decree enacted by Venezuelan president Raúl Leoni, in honor of the Venezuelan politician and President Rómulo Gallegos, the author of Doña Bárbara.
Fernando del Paso Morante was a Mexican novelist, essayist and poet.
José Emilio Pacheco Berny was a Mexican poet, essayist, novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century. The Berlin International Literature Festival has praised him as "one of the most significant contemporary Latin American poets". In 2009 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize for his literary oeuvre.
Jorge Enrique Adoum was an Ecuadorian writer, poet, politician, and diplomat. He was one of the major exponents of Latin American poetry. His work received such prestigious awards as the first Casa de las Américas Prize in Cuba, the most important honor in Latin American letters. Though hailed by Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda as the best poet of his generation in Latin America, Adoum’s work is unknown in the English-speaking world.
Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor, known professionally as Elena Poniatowska, is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper-class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper Excélsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she wrote about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. Due to her left wing views, she has been nicknamed "the Red Princess". She is considered to be "Mexico's grande dame of letters" and is still an active writer.
Juan José Arreola Zúñiga was a Mexican writer, academic, and actor. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the 20th century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Latin American writers to abandon realism; he used elements of fantasy to underscore existentialist and absurdist ideas in his work. Although he is little known outside Mexico, Arreola has served as the literary inspiration for a legion of Mexican writers who have sought to transform their country's realistic literary tradition by introducing elements of magical realism, satire, and allegory. Alongside Jorge Luis Borges, he is considered one of the masters of the hybrid subgenre of the essay-story. Arreola is primarily known for his short stories and he only published one novel, La feria.
Xavier Villaurrutia y González was a Mexican poet, playwright, translator, and literary critic whose most famous works are the short theatrical dramas called Autos profanos, compiled in the work Poesía y teatro completos, published in 1953.
Ricardo Piglia was an Argentine author, critic, and scholar best known for introducing hard-boiled fiction to the Argentine public.
Manuel Mejía Vallejo was a Colombian writer and journalist. The specialist Luís Carlos Molina says that Mejía represents the Andean aspect of the contemporary Colombian narrative, characterized by a world of symbols which are little by little being lost in the memory of the mountain.
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the international success of the style known as magical realism. As such, the region's literature is often associated solely with this style, with the 20th century literary movement known as Latin American Boom, and with its most famous exponent, Gabriel García Márquez. Latin American literature has a rich and complex tradition of literary production that dates back many centuries.
The Xavier Villaurrutia Award is a prestigious literary prize given in Mexico, to a Latin American writer published in Mexico. Founded in 1955, it was named in memory of Xavier Villaurrutia.
The Latin American Boom was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world. The Boom is most closely associated with Julio Cortázar of Argentina, Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia. Influenced by European and North American Modernism, but also by the Latin American Vanguardia movement, these writers challenged the established conventions of Latin American literature. Their work is experimental and, owing to the political climate of the Latin America of the 1960s, also very political. "It is no exaggeration", critic Gerald Martin writes, "to state that if the Southern continent was known for two things above all others in the 1960s, these were, first and foremost, the Cuban Revolution and its impact both on Latin America and the Third World generally, and secondly, the Boom in Latin American fiction, whose rise and fall coincided with the rise and fall of liberal perceptions of Cuba between 1959 and 1971."
Juan García Ponce was a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, essayist, translator and critic of Mexican art.
Daniel Sada Villarreal was a Mexican poet, journalist, and writer, whose work has been hailed as one of the most important contributions to the Spanish language.
Antonia Palacios was a Venezuelan poet, novelist and essayist. She won the National Prize for Literature in 1976 and the Municipal Prize for Literature in 1982. Along with Miguel Otero Silva, Pablo Rojas Guardia, Luis Castro, and others, she was a member of the Generation of 1928.
