EPISODE · Jul 30, 2020 · 18 MIN
Luisa Valenzuela: Love of Animals
from Writers Off the Page: From the TIFA Archives · host Toronto Public Library
Works by Luisa ValenzuelaThe Lizard’s Tail (print book)The Wanderer by Luisa Valenzuela, translated by Marguerite Feitlowitz (link opens a short story from The Brooklyn Rail's InTranslation)He Who Searches Latin American Literature Series (link opens Dalkey Archive Press site with two translated works - print on demand)Collections/Anthologies Containing Stories from Luisa ValenzuelaSudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories From Latin America and the United States (print book)Brevity by David Galef The Will to Heal: Psychological Recovery in the Novels of Latina Writers (print book) Other Related Books or MaterialsLuisa Valenzuela, The Art of Fiction No. 170 (link opens an article from The Paris Review from 2001)Luisa Valenzuela on Writing, Power and Gender (link opens an article from the Cervantes Virtual Library About the HostNovelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and principal of St. Michael’s College, where he holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. He is the author of three novels: Original Prin, Beggar's Feast, and Governor of the Northern Province. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (2006) and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (2012), and named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection (2012 and 2019) and Globe and Mail Best Book (2018). He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, Financial Times (UK), Guardian, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and National Post, in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017.Music is by Yuka From the ArchivesWriters Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first series associated with the Toronto Public Library’s multi-year digital initiative, From the Archives, which presents curated and digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s biggest cultural institutions and organizations.Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.
What this episode covers
Recorded at Toronto’s Harbourfront Reading Series in 1979, Argentine author, Luisa Valenzuela recruits Founding Artistic Director of the Harbourfront Reading Series, Greg Gatenby, to be her reading partner in a complex story of two cars as they race through the streets of Buenos Aires. In a style that is like no other writer of her generation or since, Valenzuela portrays the cold determination of the hunter and the rising fear of the hunted. Written at the height of the Dirty War, Valenzuela herself was exiled for a number of years though she made the politics and censorship of her country a central theme in much of her writing from this era. Later in this episode, Valenzuela reads a darkly humorous story about the plethora of shoes which are found on the streets, so many that even beggars of the city are “The Best Shod” destitute people in the world. The secret is simple if horrific: they are the shoes of the Disappeared. This recording was used with the kind permission of the author. This episode content was also made with the permission of the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA).
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Luisa Valenzuela: Love of Animals
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