A CONSTELLATION OF SHORT STORIES ILLUSTRATE THE INTERSECTING LIVES OF WOMEN ON VARIOUS PERIPHERIES OF SOCIETY IN AND AROUND BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA.

In six subtly connected stories, Maria Ospina's Variations on the Body explores the obsessions, desires, and idiosyncrasies of women and girls from different strata of Colombian society. Combining humor, heartbreak, and unexpected violence, Ospina constructs a keen reflection on the body as a simultaneous vehicle of connection and alienation in vibrant, gleaming prose. “Short stories fans in search of a new obsession, look no further. . . "—Chicago Review of Books

Maria Ospina  was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and is a writer, teacher and scholar of contemporary Latin American culture and serves as Chair of Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University. She has written about memory, violence, and culture in contemporary Colombia. Her stories have appeared in anthologies in Colombia and Italy. Azares del cuerpo, her first book of fiction, has been published in Colombia, Chile, Spain, and Italy. Heather Cleary is a translator and writer based in New York and Mexico City. Her translations include María Ospina’s Variations on the Body (July 2021), Betina González’s American Delirium (Feb 2021), Mario Bellatin’s Mrs. Murakami’s Garden (Dec 2020), among many others. Her new book, The Translator’s Visibility: Scenes from Contemporary Latin American Fiction will be available soon from Bloomsbury. She holds a PhD in Latin American and Iberian Cultures from Columbia University and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

This event is part of our Latinx Heritage Month programming.