Overview
Liliana Colanzi holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. Her research focuses on literatures of irreality in modern and contemporary Latin American fiction (science fiction, horror, the fantastic) and its relationship to issues of class, gender, and race, as well as to debates on animal studies and posthumanism. She has edited La desobediencia, antología de ensayo feminista (2019) and is the co-editor of the volumes Regiones inquietantes: literatura de horror en Latinoamérica (Hispanic Issues Online, Fall 2024, with Debra Castillo) and Latin American Speculative Fiction (Paradoxa, 2018, with Debra A. Castillo). She is the publisher of the independent literary press Dum Dum editora in Bolivia. As a fiction writer, she has published the short story books Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro (You Glow in the Dark, New Directions, 2024), Nuestro mundo muerto (Our Dead World, Dalkey Archive Press, 2017), and Vacaciones permanentes (2010). Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro won the Ribera del Duero Prize for short stories from among one thousand manuscripts [KPL1] submitted from the Spanish-speaking world. In 2015, she won the Aura Estrada literary award (Mexico). The Hay Festival Cartagena included her among the best Latin American writers under 40 (Bogota39, 2017). Her books have been translated into seven languages. At Cornell she has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on Brazilian literature, Latin American horror, posthumanism, animal studies, and creative writing in Spanish, among others.
Recent courses:
SPAN 3920 Women’s Writing in Brazil and Argentina
SPAN 4895 Cyborgs, Animals, and Monsters
SPAN 3170 Creative Writing in Spanish
SPAN 4855 Latin American Horror
Publications
Fiction books
Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro (You Glow in the Dark, translated by Chris Andrews, New Directions, 2024). Madrid: Páginas de Espuma, 2022.
Nuestro mundo muerto (Our Dead World, translated by Jessica Sequeira, Dalkey Archive Press 2017). Oaxaca: Almadía, 2016.
Vacaciones permanentes. La Paz: El Cuervo, 2010.
Edited volumes
Regiones inquietantes: Literatura de horror en Latinoamérica, coedited with Debra A. Castillo. Hispanic Issues, Fall 2024 (forthcoming).
La desobediencia. Antología de ensayo feminista. Santa Cruz: Dum Dum editora, 2019.
Latin American Speculative Fiction, Paradoxa, vol. 31. Coed. with Debra A. Castillo. 2018.
Articles
“Aparapitas del futuro: la ciencia ficción andina de Miguel Esquirol.” Ciencia ficción neoindigenista y afrofuturista en Latinoamérica: voces, identidades y transculturación, edited by Teresa López Pellisa. Kamchatka, revista de análisis cultural, December 2023, pp. 11-26.
“Cyborgs in the Margins: Indigeneity in El cementerio de elefantes, by Miguel Esquirol.” Posthumanism and Latin(x) American Science Fiction, edited by Emily A. Maguire and Antonio Córdoba. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2022, pp. 167-183.
“Speculative Fiction.” Latin American Literature in Transition: Volume V (1980-2017), edited by Mónica Szurmuk and Debra A. Castillo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 79-92.
“Festín del horror: la comida siniestra en ‘Alta cocina’, de Amparo Dávila.” La obra fantástica de Amparo Dávila, edited by Teresa López Pellisa and David Rosas. Brumal, Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico/ Research Journal on the Fantastic, Vol. IX, n.o 1 (primavera/spring 2021), pp. 21-31.
“Cuerpos que desaparecen: mercado, tecnología y animalidad en Los cuerpos del verano, de Martín Felipe Castagnet.” Revista Iberoamericana, Vol. LXXXVI, Núm. 270, January-March 2020, pp. 143-158.