Stories Everywhere: Listening to Latin America with Daniel Alarc贸n
Wednesday, February 28, 2024 - Thursday, February 29, 2024 | Multiple Locations | 涩里番下载 | Free and open to the public
Please note that this conference will only be available to attend in person and will not be streamed online.
Daniel Alarc贸n received a BA (1999) from Columbia University and an MFA (2004) from the University of Iowa. He was Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College (2006鈥2009) and an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (2012鈥2013). He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2014 and is currently an associate professor in the School of Journalism. Since 2012, he has served as co-founder and executive producer of Radio Ambulante, and he is a contributing writer at听The New Yorker, where he covers Latin America.听His additional works of fiction include听War by Candlelight听(2005), and his short stories and articles have appeared in听Granta, Harper鈥檚 Magazine, and听Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications.
Daniel Alarc贸n is a writer and radio producer exploring the social, cultural, and linguistic ties that connect people across Latin America and Spanish-speaking communities in the Americas. His powerful narrative storytelling鈥攊n English and Spanish, fiction and nonfiction, print and audio鈥攃hronicles individual lives and underreported topics against the backdrop of broader geopolitical and historical forces in the United States and Central and South America.
Writing in English, Alarc贸n sets most of his fiction in countries that are recognizable as Latin American but not explicitly identified. The novels Lost City Radio (2007) and At Night We Walk in Circles (2013) take place in the aftermath of political violence. Storytelling鈥攊n the form of, respectively, a radio program about and for people who disappeared during a civil war and a traveling theater troupe performing for villagers in the countryside鈥攑lays a prominent role in both novels as a means to cope with persistent trauma and build new communities. His most recent story collection, The King Is Always Above the People (2017), features people on the move and sometimes uses magical turns and settings to examine how migration alters perspective. Alarc贸n鈥檚 long-form journalism reflects his interests in Pan-American political and cultural issues. He has published deeply researched pieces on book piracy in Peru; on the 2019 civil unrest in Santiago, Chile; on life inside the notorious Peruvian prison Lurigancho; and on the collapse of Puerto Rico鈥檚 iconic Arecibo telescope. In 2012, he co-founded the Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante. Episodes are a mix of investigative journalism, interviews, and storytelling and cover a range of topics, from migrant communities in the United States and the refugee crisis in Venezuela, to youth culture in Honduras and 鈥渒iller bees鈥 in Brazil. The podcast, which is distributed by NPR, is a collaborative and transnational enterprise: stories hail from over twenty countries, and journalists throughout the Spanish-speaking world report and produce episodes. Alarc贸n both reports his own stories from across the region and plays an active role in training and mentoring the next generation of Spanish-speaking audio journalists. With its broad scope of topics and on-air participants, the podcast鈥檚 audience has grown exponentially, to more than eight million downloads a year, and it has become a widely used educational tool for journalism classes and Spanish-language learners.
Alarc贸n recently expanded his audio-journalism work with the Spanish weekly news podcast El hilo, where he serves as editorial director. El hilo engages reporters and experts across the Americas to unpack the most relevant news story from Latin America each week. Recent episodes have focused on the COVID-19 crisis in the Amazonian city of Manaus, the state of American democracy after the 2020 election, and overfishing near the Galapagos Islands. Adept in many types of media, Alarc贸n gives voice to the diverse experiences of Latin Americans and of Spanish speakers across borders.
Cosponsored by Lowell Humanities Series
ScheduleWednesday, February 28, 2024听 | Multiple Locations听 | |
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10:00 AM-2:00 PM听 | Classroom visits and workshop |听McElroy 237 | Open to Students OnlyWorkshop in Spanish for CCR students about strategies to find a good story, write a script, and produce podcasts. |
7:00-8:15 PM | Lecture |听Gasson Hall 100 | Open to Public
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Thursday, February 29, 2024听听| Multiple Locations | |
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12:00-1:30 PM听 | Informal conversation | Location TBD
Lunch with Romance Languages and Literatures Department graduate students and undergraduate students. |
4:00-5:30 PM | Roundtable |听Higgins Hall 300听| Open to Public
Roundtable in English with Romance Languages and Literatures graduate students.听 |
Campus Map and Parking
Parking is available at the nearby Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue Garages.
涩里番下载 is also accessible via public transportation (MBTA B Line - 涩里番下载).
涩里番下载 strongly encourages conference participants to receive the COVID-19 vaccination before attending events on campus.