Horacio Castellanos Moya is a writer and journalist born in Honduras and raised in El Salvador. He has been an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese since 2011. He has worked at newspapers such as elPeriódico (Guatemala), Milenio Semanal and Milenio Diario (México), Primera plana and Tendencias (El Salvador). In 2017, he received the Dean’s Scholar Award from the University of Iowa’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 2014, he was awarded the Manuel Rojas Iberoamerican Prize for Fiction by the Chilean Ministry of Culture. His work has been published in Spanish as well as English, French, German, Norwegian, Japanese, Hebrew, Swedish and Portuguese.

 

Publications:

Novels

2018. Moronga, Random House, New York.

2013. El sueño del retorno, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona.

2011. La sirvienta y el luchador, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona.

2008. Tirana memoria, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona.

2006. Desmoronamiento, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona.

2004. Insensatez, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona.

Short stories:

2009. Con la congoja de la pasada tormenta. Casi todos los cuentos, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona.

2006. Indolencia, Ediciones del Pensativo, Guatemala.

 

Columns and aphorisms:

2015. Cuaderno de Tokio (Los cuervos de Sangenjaya). Editorial Hueders, Chile.

Essays:

2013-2014. “Dalton: Cartas clandestinas” (Four Parts). Iowa Literaria, The University of Iowa.

2013. “Pedro Páramo o el quejido del muerto,” Iowa literaria, February.

2012. “Latin-American Literature: From the 'Boom' to the Hangover.” Prologue to the Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese Literature Catalogue. Lame Duck Books, Brookline, MA.

2013. “Violencia y ficción en Latinoamérica: ¿círculo vicioso o marca de Caín?”, Disturbios en la tierra sin mal, Daniel Nemrava (editor), Ejercitar la memoria editores, Argentina, 99-109.

2011. “Tres distintos maytas y un solo Vargas Llosa.” Estudios Públicos (quarterly of Centro de Estudios Públicos), No. 122, Fall, Santiago, Chile, 297-316.

2011. La metamorfosis del sabueso. Ensayos personales y otros textos. Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile.

 

Research project as CALAS fellow:

Title: Violence, migration, and identity in El Salvador

Abstract: The research will address the relationships between the culture of violence, the phenomena of internal displacement and massive external migration (mainly to the United States), and the effects on the identity or sense of belonging of the population; It will focus on the case of El Salvador, but its approach, and some of its results, could be common to two other Central American countries: Guatemala and Honduras. The main questions that we will try to answer in this work are the following: Why was the political violence of the ‘70s and ‘80s recycled into criminal violence and continues to spread through the “maras” - at the national, regional, and international level? What cultural and idiosyncratic factors have made this spread possible? What are the consequences, in cultural terms, for the population of a country to live under a climate of crime and terror for four decades? How does the phenomenon of quasi-forced migration affect the sense of identity and belonging? What mutations or new cultural patterns have occurred in a small country whose 25-30% of the population has settled abroad, mainly in the United States? Could we affirm that the Salvadoran lives an "identity in crisis"?