Punto Ciego (Notas de lectura alrededor de la ceguera)

Speaker(s): Lina Meruane

Lecture will be in Spanish.

Chilean writer and scholar Lina Meruane will present an essay that reflects on the experience of blindness and the conversion of this biographical event into fiction in her recent novel Sangre en el Ojo [Blood in the eye]. The text also reflects on the cultural meaning of sight and its loss, as well as on the representation of blindness in Western and Latin American literature. The reading will end with a visual essay based on an interview with Sylvia Molloy, who makes a fictionalised cameo appearance in Meruane´s novel. 

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Lina Meruane's work include a collection of short stories Las Infantas (1998), the novels Póstuma (2000, Portugal 2001), Cercada (2000), Fruta Podrida (2007) and Sangre en el Ojo (2012, Italy 2013, Brazil 2014). She has autored the play Un Lugar donde Caerse Muerta/Not a Leg to Stand On (2012), premiered in the USA under the direction of Martín Balmaceda. She published non fiction: the chronicle Volverse Palestina (2013), and the academic essay, Viajes Virales (2012), soon to appear in English (Viral Voyages, Palgrave McMillan). She has been awarded the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (México 2012) and the Anna Seghers (Berlín 2011) literary prizes as well as writing grants from the Guggenheim Foundation (US 2004) and the National Endowment for the Arts (US 2010). She currently teaches Latin American Cultures at New York University.

Picture by Daniel Mordinsky.