Gabriela Alemán is an Ecuadorian writer, translator, literary critic, academic and professor. She was born in Rio de Janeiro to Ecuadorian parents on September 30, 1968. After living in several countries in her youth, she settled in Quito, Ecuador. Alemán studied translation at University of Cambridge (UK), received a master’s in Latin American Literature at Simon Bolivar Andean University (Ecuador) and obtained a doctorate at Tulane University (New Orleans). In 2006, she received the Guggenheim scholarship in Film, Video and Radio Studies. Alemán won First Place at the CIESPAL de Crónica Awards for her article “Los limones del huerto de Elisabeth” (2014), and the Joaquín Gallegos Lara Prize for her short story collection La Muerte silba un blues (2014). Her best known novel is Poso Wells (2007; translated into English by Dick Cluster, 2018). The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Los Angeles Review of Books have published commentaries and interviews about the novel. Alemán teaches at the University of San Francisco, Quito and at Tulane University.
Gabriela Alemán is joined by writer and translator Dick Cluster to discuss Alemán’s first work to appear in English: Poso Wells (English audio)
Gabriela Alemán interviewed on a show called DeContrabando where she discusses her novel Humo (Spanish audio)
Literamanía – Gabriela Alemán
Interviews from Quito – Gabriel Alemán gets interviewed by Andy Sebastia (English audio)
Works
Stories
- En el país rosado, Exlibris, 1994
- Maldito corazón, El Conejo, 1996
- Zoom, Eskeletra, 1997
- Fuga permanente, Euterpe, 2001 (Eskeletra, 2002)
- Álbum de familia, Estruendomudo, Lima, 2010 (Panamericana, 2011; Cadáver Exquisito, 2012)
- La muerte silba un blues, Literatura Random House, 2014
Novels
- Body time, Planeta, 2003
- Poso Wells, Eskeletra, 2007 (Aristas Martínez, 2012) (City Lights, translated by Dick Cluster, 2018)
- Humo, Literatura Random House, Bogotá, 2017
Theater
- La acróbata del hambre, 1997
Essays
- Cine en construcción: largometrajes ecuatorianos de ficción 1924-2004, 2004