The Morning Reading:

Over at the always excellente la bloga, Daniel Olivas posts his interview with Daniel Alarcon, who co-edited the new All-Latin-American issue of Zoetrope: All Story.

excerpt:

When you start putting together something like this, you never really know what to expect. Any anthology is always a bit arbitrary, a snapshot of the editors’ tastes at any given moment, and this one is no exception. Diego and I could have picked another ten stories and been equally proud of this issue. Still, we selected these stories because they moved us, they taught us things we didn’t know. They made us laugh, they made the places we recognized seem new and startling and humane...The most pleasant and reassuring surprise was that no single style reigns. There is no unified voice in Latin America, and I don’t believe there ever was—in a region this large and diverse, how could there be? It seems more likely that the dominance of magical realism was a function of external market forces, a commercial response to the powerful example of Gabriel García Márquez, a novelist so exceptional that most honest writers would never risk imitating him. Could one literary aesthetic really have reigned for so long in an area spanning the better part of two continents and more than twenty countries? Of course not. Other voices, other styles, simply weren’t translated, and in some cases were just ignored. We’re hoping the same doesn’t happen to the next generation of writers.

To read the rest, click here.

Olivas will be in Orange County this Saturday March 28 to host the reading and reception for Latinos in Lotusland at Libreria Martinez from 3-6 PM. More later this week on that event.