Writers from the South in the North

The main purpose of this event is to bring attention to writers who were born and raised in South America, migrated to the U.S. and currently live and write there.

Rodrigo Hasbún and Leonardo García Pabón from Bolivia, Sergio Chefjec and Gisela Heffes from Argentina, Lina Meruane from Chile and José de Piérola from Perú will be in attendance. These authors are representative of two waves of migrations from South America to the United States. The first is related to political conflicts in this area during the 1980-1990s. The second is connected to (re)democratization processes beginning in the 1990s in the same region. During the end of the twentieth century, the first wave of writers arrived in the U.S and built new academic spaces for Latin American thinkers and writers. Within the United States academic setting Latin Americans were able to foster a critical approach to Latin American literary studies. Once these spaces were developed, the connections amongst the intellectuals between North and South strengthened, and this allowed the emergence of a next generation of intellectuals. Meruane, Heffes, García Pabón, de Piérola, Chefjec, and Hasbún are all writers and intellectuals that form this next generation and their works reflect concerns with bodies that migrate.