Writers living outside of Ecuador - Ecuadorian Literature

Bernardita Maldonado

Bernardita Maldonado (Loja, 1969) is an Ecuadorian poet and writer. She has resided in Spain for over 25 years. She is the author of several poetry collections, including “Biografía de los pájaros” (2007) and “Con todos los soles lejanos” (2015). She has compiled the poetry of Héctor Manuel Carrión and written an introduction to it. Her native city of Loja honored her as “Woman of Letters 2015.” She is a member of the Ecuadorian House of Culture in Loja.

Vladimiro Rivas

Vladimiro Rivas Iturralde (Latacunga, June 5, 1944) is an Ecuadorian novelist, short story writer, biographer, opera critic, essayist, editor, translator, and award-winning university professor. He has been a resident of Mexico since 1973 and also holds Mexican citizenship. Since its establishment in 1974, he has been a professor at the Azcapotzalco Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He has produced eight collections of short stories, two novels, and five nonfiction books. Some of his work has been translated to English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Bulgarian. He has also been the editor of anthologies of Ecuadorian writers, such as the acclaimed “Cuento ecuatoriano contemporáneo,” which was released in Mexico in 2001 and promptly translated into English as “Contemporary Ecuadorian Short Stories” in 2002.

Margarita Borja

Margarita Borja (Quito, 1983) is an Ecuadorian writer, journalist, translator, and literary critic. She has lived in Leipzip, Germany since 2007, where her daughters were born and raised. Since 2012 she has written an international opinion column for the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo. In 2015, she published a collection of 32 of her opinion columns as a book, “Una latina en Alemania: historias de dos mundos” [A Latina in Germany: Stories of Two Worlds]. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications.

Arturo Montesinos Malo

Arturo Montesinos Malo (Cuenca, August 31, 1913 – May 23, 2009) was an Ecuadorian novelist, professor, and translator who lived in the United States for many years where he worked as a translator at the United Nations in New York. In 1959, he received the “José de la Cuadra” Award for his short story collection “Arcilla indócil,” which is considered by many to be his best work. Some of his Spanish-to-English translations of contemporary writers’ short stories and poems appeared in Letras del Ecuador.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (1989) is a writer from Ecuador. In 2020 she published, “The Undocumented Americans,” which was among Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020, it was also a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Writing for The New York Times, Caitlin Dickerson called the book “captivating and evocative.” Cornejo graduated from Harvard in 2011, becoming the first undocumented immigrant to do so. She was an Emerson Collective fellow, and as of September 2020 is a Ph.D. candidate in the American studies program at Yale. Her articles have been published in The Atlantic, Elle, Glamour, n+1, The New Republic, The New York Times, and Vogue.

George Reyes

George Reyes (Los Ríos, Ecuador, 1960) is an Ecuadorian poet, essayist, editor, theology professor, and pastor. He has been a permanent resident of Mexico for many years. He has a bachelor’s degree in theology, two master’s degrees in theology, and is a PhD candidate in theology. He is the author of two books on Biblical hermeneutics and co-author of two books on theology. He’s also the author of two poetry collections, “El azul de la tarde” (2015) and “Ese otro exilio, esa otra patria” (2016). He is listed in Mexico’s Encyclopedia of Literature.

Ana Cecilia Blum

Ana Cecilia Blum (Guayaquil, March 17, 1972) is an Ecuadorian poet, essayist, fiction writer, editor, translator and journalist. She studied political and social sciences at the Vicente Rocafuerte Secular University in Guayaquil. She earned a postgraduate degree in “Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language” from Colorado State University (U.S.). She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the digital magazine Metaforología which publishes poetry, fiction and essays. She currently lives between Ecuador and the United States. Some of her work has been translated into English, French, Italian and Portuguese.

Yanna Hadatty

Yanna Hadatty Mora (Guayaquil, 1969) is an Ecuadorian short story writer, essayist, and literary critic. Based in Mexico since 1992, she earned her Doctorate in Ibero-American Literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her work focuses on the study of Latin American avant-garde literature, particularly in Ecuador and Mexico, and she has published extensively on these subjects, including the critical essays Autofagia y narración (2003) and La ciudad paroxista (2009). Hadatty has also contributed to numerous anthologies and continues to teach and conduct research at UNAM.

Tamara Cadena (pen name Judesty)

Tamara Cadena, pen name Judesty (Quito, 1967) is an Ecuadorian writer. She has received several national and international awards and recognitions. In 2009, Cadena’s first novel El acuerdo (2008) won first prize in the online literary contest of El Corte Inglés and BookAndYou.com. Cadena’s third and latest novel El tiempo roto (2017) was well-received by critics. She has lived in Spain since she was thirteen. Cadena publishes her books under the pseudonym Judesty.