Megan McDowell
Megan McDowell has translated many of the most important Latin American writers working today. Her translations have won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the English PEN award, the Premio Valle-Inclán, and two O. Henry Prizes, and have been nominated for the International Booker Prize (four times) and the Kirkus Prize. Her short story translations have been featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Granta, among others. In 2020 she won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is from Richmond, Kentucky, and lives in Santiago, Chile.
from Austral
By Carlos Fonseca, trans. Megan McDowellProfessor Julio Gamboa, the protagonist of Carlos Fonseca's latest novel, Austral, is summoned by post to the Humahuaca mountain valley in Argentina. Here, renowned writer and intimate from Julio's youth, Aliza Abravanel, retreated in her final days to complete a tetralogy on the elements. The landscape perfectly matches Abravanel's project: the sunbleached-rainbow striations of sedimentary rock give visual form to her book on earth, Strata, or, alternatively-titled, her Dictionary of Loss.
