Arturo Arias (writer)

Arturo Arias (Guatemala City, 1950) is a Guatemalan novelist and critic, who is a professor of 20th-century Spanish-American Literature at the University of California, Merced. He has taught courses specializing in: Central American literature; Indigenous literatures; social and critical theory; race, gender and sexuality in post-colonial societies; cultural studies, and ethnographic approaches. Arias has previously taught at San Francisco State University and the University of Redlands in Southern California,and he is a past president of the Latin American Studies Association. Arias holds a PhD in Sociology of Literature, from L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Paris, France. (1978) He has published seven novels and four academic books. He received the Casa de las Américas prize for his novel Itzam Na (1981), the Anna Seghers award for his novel Jaguar en llamas 1990), and the Casa de las Américas prize in essay for his book Ideología, Literatura y Sociedad durante the Revolución Guatemalteca, 1944-1954 (1979). His most recent novel is Arias de Don Giovanni (FyG Editores, 2010).

His books in English includeThe Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Taking their Word, After the Bombs, and Rattlesnake.

List of works in English

• Arias, Arturo (1990), After the Bombs, Willimantic, CT: Curbstone, ISBN 978-0-915306-88-6. Trans. Asa Zatz.
• Arias, Arturo (2001), The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-0-8166-3626-6.
• Arias, Arturo (2007), Taking their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-0-8166-4849-8
• Rattlesnake Curbstone Press (2003) ISBN 978-1-931896-01-6 (spy thriller)

Awards

• Anna Seghers Prize 1990 for his novel Jaguar en llamas
• Academy Award 1985 for Best Original Screenplay (El Norte); co-writer
• Casa de las Américas Prize 1981 for his novel Itzam-Na
• Casa de las Américas Prize 1979 for his essay Ideologías, literatura y sociedad durante la revolución guatemalteca 1944-1954

References

• Arturo Arias - Academic Biography