Biographical Information
Born in Santiago, Chile. Raised in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles. Based in Los Angeles, California. Fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
Education
PhD in Comparative Literature. University of California at Los Angeles. 2007. Dissertation: “The Translator’s Colors: Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil and Elsewhere.”
BA in Social Studies. Harvard University. 1999. Thesis: “Raúl Zurita’s Purgatorio: Poetry as Politics and Memory in Post-1973 Chile.”
Work Experience
Columnist (January 2021 to present). Hopscotch Translation‘s “Translationships” column.
Visiting Scholar (January 2020 to present). UCLA’s Latin American Institute.
Board Member (June 2020 to present). Heidi Duckler Dance.
Actor (2017 to present). Casting Networks. IMDB.
Contributing Editor (May 2013 to the present). Los Angeles Review of Books.
Artist in Residence (2020). Highways Performance Space.
Co-Ambassador (2018 to 2020). Authors Guild. Los Angeles Chapter.
Co-Editor (Summer 2013 to Spring 2015). Around the World. Los Angeles Review of Books.
Novelist’s Assistant (Summer 2009 to Summer 2014). Assistant to Mona Simpson, author of six novels, including My Hollywood (Knopf 2010) and Casebook (Knopf 2014).
Freelance Editor (Summer 2007 to Summer 2014). Editor of Narrating from the Archive: Novels, Records, and Bureaucrats in the Modern Age (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2010) written by literature scholar and Italian novelist Marco Codebò. Have worked with other scholars, writers, and novelists on various projects.
Selected Publications
An Essay on Clarice Lispector, forthcoming in the volume After Clarice: Reading Lispector’s Legacy in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Adriana X. Jacobs and Claire Williams. Cambridge: Legenda, 2021.
An Essay on Elizabeth Bishop in Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies 33: Ocean Crossings. Edited by Andre Novoa. Dartmouth: Tagus Press, 2021.
An Essay on Clarice Lispector in the volume El arte de pensar sin riesgos: 100 años de Clarice Lispector. Edited by Mariela Méndez, Claudia Darrigrandi, & Mácarena Mallea. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2021.
“Translationships.” An ongoing column at Hopscotch Translation. January 2021 to the present.
“Blue Surrender & Forever Love in Quarantine.” On You Darling Thing by Monica Ferrell. In Full Stop. May 21, 2020.
Edwards, Magdalena; Gotlib, Nádia, Paddock, Lisa; Rollyson, Carl. “Benjamin Moser’s Pulitzer Prize is a Travesty.” An Op-Ed published in Los Angeles Review of Books. May 13, 2020.
“Marriage Is the End” — a response to Rivka Galchen’s review of Clarice Lispector’s The Chandelier & The Besieged City — published in the London Review of Books. May 7, 2020.
Suspending Disbelief. The Point Magazine. April 23, 2020.
“Benjamin Moser & the Smallest Woman in the World.” Los Angeles Review of Books. August 16, 2019.
“The Real Clarice: A Conversation with Magdalena Edwards” (An Interview with David Shook about Clarice Lispector). Los Angeles Review of Books. November 23, 2018.
“An Issue of Boundaries: An Interview with Idra Novey.” Los Angeles Review of Books. November 6, 2018.
“The Lost Neruda Poems.” Boston Review. December 21, 2016.
“Prince Left Us an Instruction Manual.” Medium. April 28, 2016.
“Pyschogeography of the Disappeared: An Interview with Magdalena Edwards and Forrest Gander on Raúl Zurita”; “Afterword.” Psychogeographical Romance: Three Interviews. Ed. Leonard Schwartz. Essay Press. November 2015.
“American Witches: The Millions Interviews Alex Mar.” The Millions. October 21, 2015.
“Killing Fiction Meets the Medea Impasse: On Rachel Cusk’s Outline and Medea.” Los Angeles Review of Books. September 25, 2015.
“A Horribly Marvelous and Delicate Abyss: The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector.” The Millions. August 10, 2015.
“Alice Fulton’s Barely Composed.” Boston Review. May/June 2015. (pp. 74-5)
“Adrienne Rich in Chile: An Interview.” The Critical Flame. March 23, 2015.
“On Waiting and Sugar.” Los Angeles Review of Books. November 15, 2014.
“It Takes Two” (on Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs). Rewire Me. November 5, 2014.
“Paz with a ‘Z'” (found poem). Silver Birch Press. September 26, 2014.
“My Disease Feels Beautiful to Me: On the Work of Raúl Zurita.” The Millions. September 25, 2014.
“Look! Our Bodies in Play.” An Essay on the American artist Michael Sagato for his solo show at Jack Geary Contemporary. Michael Sagato: Birds of a Feather (artist’s catalog). New York City. April 24, 2014. (My essay was quoted by Artsy Editorial here.)
“A [Bilingual] Conversation with Forrest Gander and Raúl Zurita about ‘Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America.'” Los Angeles Review of Books. February 2, 2014.
“I Found a Way to Enter: Diving Into Writing.” The Millions. November 26, 2013.
“‘The House We Live In’: Elizabeth Bishop on the Big Screen.” The Paris Review Daily. November 7, 2013.
“Precious Cargo.” The Paris Review Daily. June 28, 2013.
“Playing Telephone with Emily Dickinson and Paul Legault.” The Millions. November 14, 2012.
“Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star As Translated by Benjamin Moser.” The Millions. January 11, 2012.
“Unmentionables: Norman Rush’s Domestic Disturbances.” Los Angeles Review of Books. October 24, 2011.
Review of Ernesto Cardenal’s The Origin of Species and Other Poems. Rattle. September 20, 2011.
“Anniversaries, Anesthesia, and Elizabeth Bishop.” The Millions. August 10, 2011.
El Mercurio (Chile’s leading newspaper). Articles published (in Spanish) in the “Artes & Letras” section from July 2000 to June 2001, including: interviews with Rita Dove, Adrienne Rich, Armando Uribe (Part 1 & Part 2) and Isabel Allende; features on the historic Parisian cabaret known as Crazy Horse, the PRI in Mexico, and philanthropy in Latin America; and reviews of many books and films, including Julian Schnabel’s film version of Reinaldo Arena’s novel Before Night Falls.
Selected Translations from Spanish & Portuguese
Julio Cortázar’s Letters from Mom. Forthcoming from Sublunary Editions in early 2022.
Noemi Jaffe’s “Blog.” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas. Issue 102, Volume 54, Issue 1: Digital Brazil: Voices of Resistance. pages 28-33. July 2021.
An excerpt from Marcia Tiburi’s novel Under My Feet, My Whole Body. Words Without Borders. May 9, 2019.
Clarice Lispector’s The Chandelier. New York: New Directions, 2018. Translated from the Portuguese.
“The Cosmopolitanism of the Poor” by Silviano Santiago. Los Angeles Review of Books. September 6, 2017. This theoretical essay begins with a reflection on Manoel de Oliveira‘s film “Voyage to the Beginning of the World” and is the first essay in the collection Cosmopolitanisms, NYU Press 2017.
“A [Bilingual] Conversation with Forrest Gander and Raúl Zurita about ‘Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America.'” Los Angeles Review of Books. February 2, 2014.
“Chile’s September 11: Marking the 40th Anniversary of Pinochet” by Óscar Contardo. Los Angeles Review of Books. September 11, 2013.
“Brazil: The Ground Shakes in the Country of Inequalities and Paradoxes” by Luiz Eduardo Soares. Los Angeles Review of Books. July 1, 2013.
Texts by and about the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra for his show titled “Obras Públicas” (Public Works) at the National Library in Madrid, Spain. May 30 through September 1, 2013. Critical texts about Parra by Spanish writer and critic Ignacio Echavarría.
Yaddo Residency. Saratoga Springs, NY. Summer 2016.
Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA. 2006-07.
Faculty Women’s Club Fellowship, UCLA. 2002-2007.
FLAS Fellowship for Advanced Portuguese. 2004-05.
Named an Alternate for the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for study in Brazil. 2004-05.
Fishbaugh/UCLA Affiliates Fellowship. 2003-04.
Dept. of English, UCLA. Shirle Dorothy Robbins Poetry Contest, 2nd place. 2003.
Dept. of Comparative Literature, UCLA. Department Fellowship. 2001-2003.
Pollak/UCLA Affiliates Fellowship, UCLA. 2002-2003.
UCLA Latin America Center Small Grant. 2002-03.
UCLA Center for Study of Women Graduate Travel Grant. 2002-03.
James R. and Isabel D. Hammond Prize for the best undergraduate thesis on a subject concerning the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas, Harvard University. 1999.
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Summer Field Research Travel Grant, Harvard University. 1998.
Potter Prize (second place), Harvard University. 1998.
Thomas & Frances Haldeman Sidwell Award. Sidwell Friends School. 1995.
Teaching Experience
Lecturer. UCLA, Dept of Comparative Literature. September 2007 to June 2008. “Chains, Trains & Auto-mobiles: The Organization & Classification of Peoples and Thoughts in Literature from the Enlightenment to the 20th Century.”
Instructor of record. UCLA, Dept of Comparative Literature. Prepared and taught three undergraduate comparative literature courses (one per quarter) that fulfilled the university mandated writing requirement. Prepared course syllabi, lectures, and discussions, as well as graded papers, exams, and other assignments. September 2005 to June 2006.
Teaching Assistant. UCLA, Dept of Comparative Literature. Prepared and taught weekly discussion sections for undergraduate lecture courses. Graded papers, exams, and other assignments. September 2003 to June 2004.
Instructor. Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (Santiago, Chile). “Hemingway, Woolf, and Faulkner.” Undergraduate elective course for Literature majors. March to July 2001.
Instructor. Universidad del Desarrollo (Santiago, Chile). “Twentieth-Century Literature” and “Literature and Journalism.” Core courses for undergraduate Literature and Journalism majors. July 2000 to July 2001.
Other Experience
Graduate Assistant. Proofread articles for The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2005) edited by Efraín Kristal. July 2003.
Student Affairs Officer. UCLA’s Scholarship Resource Center. Assisted students with the scholarship application process. September 2002 to June 2003.
Languages
Spanish, native speaker.
Portuguese, near-native speaker.
French, advanced reading, writing, conversational skills.