Three Messages and a Warning (27 page)

Beatriz Escalante is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and academic textbooks. Her publications include
Los pegasos de la memoria, Júrame que te casaste virgen,
and
El marido perfecto.
She lives in Mexico City.

Bernardo Fernández (
Mexico City, 1972), aka
Bef
, is a novelist, comic-book artist, and graphic designer. He has published the novels
Tiempo de alacranes
(
Scorpions Season
, 2005),
Gel azul
(
Blue Gel
, 2006),
Ladrón de sueños
(
The Dream Thief
, 2008) and
Ojos de lagarto
(
Snake Eyes
, 2009); the short-story collections
¡¡Bzzzzzzt!! Ciudad interfase
(
¡¡Bzzzzzzt!! Interface City,
1998) and
El llanto de los niños muertos
(
The Crying of the Dead Children
, 2008); the children’s books
Error de programación
(
Software Error
, 1997),
Cuento de hadas para conejos
(
Fairy Tales for Bunnies,
2007),
Groar
and
Soy el robot
(
I Am the Robot,
2010); short comic-book stories
Pulpo cómics
(
Octopus Comics,
2004),
Monorama
(2007), and
Monorama 2
(2009) and the graphic novels
Perros Muertos
(Dead Dogs, 2006),
Espiral
(
Spiral
, 2010) and
La Calavera de Cristal
(
The Crystal Skull,
2011). Called by some one of the best young Mexican writers of our times, he has won several prizes, including the Mexican national novel prize Otra Vuelta de Tuerca, the Spanish Memorial Silverio Cañada prize for best first crime novel, and the Ignotus prize of the Spanish Association of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror. His latest novel, Hielo Negro (Black Ice), a thriller about the narco culture, received the 2011 Grijalbo Novel Award. He is currently working on Uncle Bill, a graphic novel about the American writer William Burroughs and his time in Mexico.

Bruno Estañol was born in a little port of the Gulf of Mexico, Frontera Tabasco, Mexico. He writes mainly short novels and stories as well as essays. He is a neurologist and professor of clinical neurophysiology at the National University of Mexico.

Carmen Rioja
(Monterrey, 1975) is a Mexican writer and artist. She has participated in several literary workshops with writers such as María Luisa Puga, Guillermo Samperio, Juan Villorio, Antonio Vilanova, and Jorge Hernández among others. Rioja studied Hispanic Letters and has published the short story collection
La Muerte Niña
(El Hechicero Books), which includes the story “La Casa de Chayo” (“Chayo’s House”) adapted into an IMCINE award-winning short film by Guissepe Solano. Carmen has also published poetry in magazines and periodicals; the poem
Vuelo Aerostático sobre Teotihuacán
(
Air Balloon Flight over Teotihihuacán
) is included in the anthology
Corazón Prestado: El Mundo Precolombino en la Poesía de los Siglos XIX y XX
(
Borrowed Heart: The Pre-Columbian World in the Poetry of the 19th & 20th Centuries
). Her work has appeared in the newspaper
El Corregidor
of Querétaro, and she served as co-producer and host of the literary critique radio show
Sancho Panza de Cabeza
. Currently, she writes her blog
Hojas al Rio
(Leaves on the River). She is also a conservation artist specializing in colonial and archaeological collections, and works in cultural and art promotion. Her involvement in plastic arts includes several painting techniques and sculpture.

Claudia Guillén (Mexico City, 1963) is a writer of fiction and essays. She won the Young Creators scholarship from FONCA in the short-story category and from the same institution the Abroad Residencies scholarship in Salzburg, Austria. Her short story “La cita” won the XXXV Latin-American Edmundo Valadés Short Story award. She writes for Revista de la Universidad de México and Diario Milenio. Her literary work has appeared in La insospechada María y otras mujeres (The Unexpected Mary and Other Womena) and Los otros (The Others), and the anthologies Un hombre a la medida (A Man to the Extent, which she also edited), Con licencia para escribir (Licensed to Write), Cuentos Violentos (Violent Stories), Prohibido fumar (No Smoking), Atrapados en la escuela (Trapped in School) and Sólo cuento (Only Story). Some of her work has also been translated to English and French.

Donají Olmedo
was born in Distrito Federal, México, 1964. She is a graduate of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and has a cardiology postgraduate degree from the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social. She has taken part in many literary workshops, mainly short story and microfiction, at Casa Refugio Citlaltépec at the Fundación Cultural Samperio, A.C. Her literary work has been concentrated mainly on short stories and short novel. She has a blog and a website, “Casa de Ateh,” where she publishes her own literature and other Mexican authors.

Edmée Pardo
(Mexico City, 1965) is the author of many novels and collections, including
The Blue Voice
and
Sickness is Written With a C
. She is a founding member of the independent publishing house Brujas and founding partner of Amati (a literature workshop space). She is an experienced journalist and is a commentator on the “Abra Palabra” program. She teaches at Amati and La Casa Universitaria del Libro. Her website is edmeepardo.com.

Esther M. Garcia (Cd. Juárez, 1987) is a writer, journalist, and photographer. She holds a degree in Spanish Literature from the Autonomous University of Coahuila. She received the National Short Story Prize Criaturas de la noche in 2008, and published the poetry collection La Doncella Negra (2010), and the short-story collection Las Tijeras de Átropos (2011). Other stories have been anthologized in Los Nuevos Románticos. Her journalistic work has appeared in newspapers and magazines including Espacio 4, Palabra, Vanguardia, La i Saltillo, Día Siete, Plaza Ludens, Lóbulo temporal, palabrasmalditas.net and Pirocromo.

Gabriela Damián Miravete
(Mexico City, 1979) is a writer, journalist, editor, and lecturer. She has a masters in Communication from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and degrees in creative writing from the SOGEM Escuela de Escritores and in the literature of the fantastic from the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana. She received the Story Prize from the Feria Internacional del Libro Infantil y Juvenil (FILIJ) for
La Tradición de Judas
(illustrated by Cecilia Varela) and grant from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes de México, with the support of which she wrote
Pequeños naipes de opalo,
a volume of fantastic stories themed around the seasons, which includes “Future Nereid.” Each week she recommends strange books—like this one—on the radio program Ecléctico, and she participates in the feminist broadcast Nuestra habitación both on Código DF radio and online. She lives with three cats, waiting patiently for the day when she can replace them with a dragon. Her blog lives on at: naipesdeopalo.blogsome.com

Gerardo Sifuentes
(Tampico, 1974) is a journalist and author of short stories. He was co-founder of the pioneer Spanish-language cyberpunk zine
Fractal
. His work has been collected twice, in
Perro de Luz
(
Light Dog
, 1999) and
Pilotos Infernales
(
Infernal Pilots
, 2002), and appeared in various magazines and anthologies, earning the Kalpa Prize for best short story published in Mexico and the 2002 Vid International Fantasy and Science Fiction Award for the best collection. He is currently editorial coordinator of Muy Interesante (Very Interesting), a popular science and history magazine.

Guillermo Samperio
(Mexico City, 1948). He has written more than twenty books, including short stories, novels, essays, children’s literature, and poetry. His most recent books are:
Cuentos Reunidos
(Alfaguara, Mexico);
Cómo se escribe un cuento 500 Tips para nuevos cuentistas del siglo XXI
(Berenice, Spain);
La guerra oculta
, cuentos, (Lectorum, México)
. His work has been translated into multiple languages. He is director of the
Despacho de Ingeniería Cultural, S.C.,
presidente de la Fundación Cultural Samperio, A.C.
, newspaper columnist and contributor to the financial magazine
Siempre!
,
Día Siete
,
La Jornada Semanal y Laberinto
(Milenio)
, among others. His most recent books are
Marcos, el enmascarado de estambre
, (biografía no autorizada y novelada)
, (Editorial Lectorum, Mexico), and an anthology of short stories, prose poetry, and a novel titled
Maravillas malabares
(Editorial
Cátedra,
Spain). He lives in Mexico City.

Hernán Lara Zavala
is a short-story writer, novelist, and essayist. Although he was born in Mexico City, his family comes from Yucatan, where many of his stories are set. He is the author of a novel,
Península Península
, which was awarded the Real Academia Española Award, and a number of short-story collections. He lives in México City, where he teaches at the University of Mexico.

Horacio Sentíes Madrid
was born in Mexico City in 1970. Dr. Senties is an Honorary Fellow in Internal Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and a Headache Fellow at the Headache Clinic in Houston, Texas. He has given 146 lectures and has published 117 articles, book chapters, and abstracts in medical books and journals, and is a member of the editorial committee of multiple medical journals. Dr. Sentíes is Neurology professor (Panamericana University and Superior Studies Technological Institute of Monterrey), Neurophysiology professor (postgraduate course, UNAM). He was the Secretary of the Mexican Academy of Neurology and is the coordinator of Adults Latinoamerican Commission of the International League Against Epilepsy and Vicepresident of Epilepsy Mexican Chapter. He has published cultural essays (e.g., “The Enigma of Synesthesia” in Letras Libres) and fiction. He is also a piano composer.

Iliana Estañol
(Mexico City, 1978) began taking pictures at the age of eleven with an old Canon camera that her father gave her. At about the same age, she started writing poetry and short stories. It didn’t take long until she started making long photography series. Telling stories with still images became her passion. But the happiness didn’t last, she soon realized that she wanted those images to move. She studied film direction and screenwriting in Cuba, Berlin, and Zurich. Since 1999 she has written and directed several movies and has continued to write short stories. She has worked in Burkina Faso, Korea, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Brasil, Cuba and of course Mexico.

Jesús Ramírez Bermúdez
(Mexico City, 1973) studied medicine, psychiatry, and neuropsychiatry, and received a master’s and doctorate in Medical Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). He is Chief of the Neuropsychiatry Unit of the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery. He has received national and international awards for his work as a researcher. His stories and essays have been published in
Dosfilos, Inland, The Day Weekly,
and
The Tempest
. In 2006 he published the novel
Confabulation
, chosen by the newspapers
Reforma
,
Milenio
, and
Proceso
, as among the best of the year. In 2007 he received the “Young Creators” grant from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts for his book of essays,
A Short Clinical Dictionary of the Soul.

José Luis Zárate
(Puebla, 1966) is one of the best-known contemporary Mexican authors of science fiction, as well as having written works outside the genre. His best-known novels include Xanto, noveluche libre (Santo, 1994), La ruta del hielo y sal (The Road of Ice and Salt, 1998), and Del cielo oscuro y del abismo (The Dark Sky and the Abyss, 2001), together forming the trilogy The Phases of Myth in which the popular culture figures Dracula, Superman, and the Mexican masked wrestler El Santo are seen from the perspective of residents of their fictional worlds. His other works include the novel Ventana 654 ¿Cuánto Falta para el Futuro? (Window 654: How Far to the Future?, 2004), the short-story collections El viajero (The Traveler, 1987), Permanencia Voluntaria (Volunteer Retention, 1990), Magia (Magic, 1994), Las razas ocultas (The Hidden Races, 1999), Hyperia (1999), and Quitzä y otros sitios (Quitzä and Other Sites, 2002), and the essay collection En el principio fue el sangre (In the Beginning was the Blood, 2004). A founder of the Mexican Science Fiction Association, his works have won various national and international awards.