"I am an American Writer": An Interview with Daniel Alarcon

Abstract

Daniel Alarcón is an American author of Peruvian descent who has made a significant impact in the literary landscapes of both the US and Peru. His first collection of stories, War by Candlelight (2005), was a finalist for the 2005 PEN-Hemingway Award, and his novel, Lost City Radio (2007), was named Best Novel of the Year by the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle and also won the 2009 International Literature Prize in Berlin. His latest novel, At Night We Walk in Circles (2013), was a finalist for the 2014 PEN / Faulkner Foundation Award. This accomplished author –named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” –is associate director of Peru’s prestigious literary magazine, Etiqueta Negra; executive producer of Radio Ambulante; and was recently named Assistant Professor of Broadcast Journalism at Columbia University. Our interview with Daniel Alarcón was conducted during his visit to the University of Notre Dame, where he read from his then work-in-progress, At Night We Walk in Circles, to an audience of over three hundred people. We spoke with the author on the morning of 3 October 2011 about the complexities of being a Peruvian American writer; his views on US Latina/o literature; the reception of his work; his experiences teaching photography in impoverished San Juan de Lurigancho as a Fulbright Scholar; Latin American literature; Peruvian cinema; and his two most recent projects, Radio Ambulante and At Night We Walk in Circles.