“ Memory, identity, and diaspora are at the heart of this author’s work-a sharp critique of her country’s reality .” Coolt
Daniela Catrileo grants voice and presence to those rarely seen in literature. Piñen (‘ layered dirt’ in English) casts an unflinching gaze on the stark margins of urban life. Its young lives drift through the many peripheries of the city carrying a hope as immense as the injustice that defines their days. Within its pages unfold the bullet-ridden death of a big shot from the blocks; the fraught, often violated sexuality of women in a displaced community; the unwavering bond between two friends navigating the waria ; the toxicity that seeps through youth and the distances that inevitably come with growing up; and a fierce declaration of love to the clandestine spirit of a brother.
Daniela Catrileo is a writer and a professor of philosophy based in Valparaíso, Chile. She is a member of the Colectivo Mapuche Rangiñtulewfü and part of the editorial team at Yene , a digital magazine. She has published three poetry collections, Río herido, Guerra florida , and El territorio del viaje ; a novel Chilco ; story collection Piñen ; and the essay Sutura de las aguas: Un viaje especulativo sobre la impureza .
In conversation with poet and librettist Annemarie Ní Churreáin , poetry editor at The Stinging Fly Magazine, whose books include Bloodroot and Hymn to All the Restless Girls .
Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Chile.