Latin American Literature Today

Latin American Literature

ISSUE

36

DECEMBER
2025

In our thirty-sixth issue, we highlight the role of the literary critic with a cover feature dedicated to Christopher Domínguez Michael. Domínguez Michael is recognized as one of his generation’s definitive critics and intellectuals, and is the author of essential histories, biographies, and anthologies dedicated to the literature of his native Mexico and beyond. This issue’s second dossier focuses on the often-ignored subject of the literary diary, with reflections on the writing of three Chilean diarists: Álvaro Campos, Francisco Díaz Klaassen, and Gonzalo Millán. We also include interviews with Jacobo Siruela, Jaime Collyer, Mariana de Althaus, and Héctor Abad Faciolince, poetry by Ismael Gavilan, Carlos Cociña, Martín Tonlameyotl, Nora Alarcón, and Maria Emanuelle Cardoso, an essay on artificial intelligence by Kenneth Kronenberg, previews of new books in translation by Daniela Rea, Edgardo Rivera Martínez, and Yuliana Ortiz Ruano, and reviews of twelve new books from across Latin America.

Featured Author:

Christopher Domínguez Michael

Questions for a Necessary Critic: A Conversation with Christopher Domínguez Michael

By Wilfrido H. Corral

His books confirm that he is an aesthete, a jovial philologist, philosopher, and historian without getting lost in any of these fields, allowing ideas to reign over emotion. A global Latin American, and not a “Latin-Americanist,” he is a master of creative interpretation.

A Letter to Christopher Domínguez Michael

BY Guillermo Sucre

Domínguez Michael and Overwriting

BY José Balza

By Marcelo Rioseco

I live my life on the margins of general trends and focus on the short story, on the short form—which, when it achieves the extraordinary, for me, is irreplaceable. But the short story demands a more engaged reader; the effort that a novel asks of the reader is confined to its first twenty pages. On the other hand, with short stories, this effort must be made anew with each reading of every story. Also, my favorite twentieth-century author is Borges, a master of the short story. So, the short written form, like poetry, has always been one of my most deeply rooted passions.

“Letters You Should Drink”: A Conversation with Jaime Collyer

By María Eugenia Meza Basaure

“It is difficult for a country to have a theater that does not reflect its most urgent wounds”: A Conversation with Mariana de Althaus

By Adriana Pacheco

In effect, we are seeing what might be termed digital Fordism. Fordism was the process—named after Henry Ford and begun at the turn of the last century—by which skilled mechanics who built cars became assembly-line workers in the name of standardization and efficiency. The skills they had honed through years of experience were no longer needed, resulting in progressive de-skilling.

By Jaime Collyer

Ocurrió sin que Robledo llegara a preverlo, con Juliette al final de su ciclo habitual, cuando le tocaba –a esa Juliette en particular– decaer y agotarse. Era el procedimiento fijado entre ambos con Macarena, para los clones que solían enviarse por turnos, como una forma curiosa de prolongar su nexo, ese noviazgo vacilante en la distancia. Los dos se enviaban cada tanto sus respectivos duplicados, que duraban un lapso prefijado y luego decaían sin estridencias, a los pocos días.