Writing in Latin America today

Santiago Gamboa will focus on the topic «Writing in Latin America today» and on his long career as a journalist and narrator. After the talk, participants will get the chance to intervene by asking questions and making comments.

Santiago Gamboa Samper (Bogotá, 1965) is a Colombian writer, philologist, diplomat, columnist, correspondent and journalist. He studied literature at the Javerian University of Bogotá. Then he moved to Spain, where he remained until 1990 and graduated in Hispanic philology at the University of Alcalá de Henares. Afterwards, he moved to Paris, where he studied Cuban literature at the Sorbonne.

He made his debut as a novelist with Páginas de vuelta (1995); later he wrote Perder es cuestión de método (1997), which was translated into Italian, French, Greek, Portuguese, Czech, and German. Later he published Vida feliz de un joven llamado Esteban (2000). He is also the author of the travel book Octubre en Pekín (2001).

In 2009, Gamboa published Necropolis, a novel that won that year's La Otra Orilla Literary Prize. In 2012 the novel was published in English by Europa Editions.

As a journalist, he has been a contributor to the Latin American Service of Radio France International in Paris, a correspondent for El Tiempo and columnist for the magazine Cromos.