el deseo (a performance, photo exhibition, installation, and website). Las Violetas son flores del deseo (Alfaguara 2007) won the Radio France International Short Novel Juan Rulfo Prize and was the origin point of a multimedia project that included a sex doll exhibition, installation, performance, and website. Her most recent novel is El dibujante de sombras (Alfaguara 2009).
Ana Gloria Álvarez Pedrajo was born in her beloved Mexico on the 17th of December. Since then she writes: “I liked to listen to all kinds of tales, especially ghost stories. We Mexicans keep a tight relationship with our dead friends and family; we take food for them to the cemetery, decorate their tombs with lots of flowers, we sing and we talk to them daily. I remember the distress caused by the falling soil on my grandmother’s coffin. She always had been energetic and of cheerful temperament. My mind, then a child’s mind, couldn’t understand how that phenomenon, the one called “death” by the adults, could keep her from her sad fate. My father, aware of this, explained to me that this life is not the real one; that the happiness we all desperately seek is only possible in the eternity with God. I believe the recurrence of unearthly and mystic topics in my work is caused by this first impression. I can say that the spirits and I are friends, we understand each other. Neither they nor I belong to this world; them for their condition, I by my inability to adapt and because my soul longs and sensed the beauty of the intangible and immaterial universe.”
Beatriz Escalante is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and academic textbooks. Her publications include Los pegasos de la memoria, Júrame que te casaste virgen, and El marido perfecto. She lives in Mexico City.
Bernardo Fernández (Mexico City, 1972), aka Bef, is a novelist, comic-book artist, and graphic designer. He has published the novels Tiempo de alacranes (Scorpions Season, 2005), Gel azul (Blue Gel, 2006), Ladrón de sueños (The Dream Thief, 2008) and Ojos de lagarto (Snake Eyes, 2009); the short-story collections ¡¡Bzzzzzzt!! Ciudad interfase (¡¡Bzzzzzzt!! Interface City, 1998) and El llanto de los niños muertos (The Crying of the Dead Children, 2008); the children’s books Error de programación (Software Error, 1997), Cuento de hadas para conejos (Fairy Tales for Bunnies, 2007), Groar and Soy el robot (I Am the Robot, 2010); short comic-book stories Pulpo cómics (Octopus Comics, 2004), Monorama (2007), and Monorama 2 (2009) and the graphic novels Perros Muertos (Dead Dogs, 2006), Espiral (Spiral, 2010) and La Calavera de Cristal (The Crystal Skull, 2011). Called by some one of the best young Mexican writers of our times, he has won several prizes, including the Mexican national novel prize Otra Vuelta de Tuerca, the Spanish Memorial Silverio Cañada prize for best first crime novel, and the Ignotus prize of the Spanish Association of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror. His latest novel, Hielo Negro (Black Ice), a thriller about the narco culture, received the 2011 Grijalbo Novel Award. He is currently working on Uncle Bill, a graphic novel about the American writer William Burroughs and his time in Mexico.
Bruno Estañol was born in a little port of the Gulf of Mexico, Frontera Tabasco, Mexico. He writes mainly short novels and stories as well as essays. He is a neurologist and professor of clinical neurophysiology at the National University of Mexico.
Carmen Rioja (Monterrey, 1975) is a Mexican writer and artist. She has participated in several literary workshops with writers such as María Luisa Puga, Guillermo Samperio, Juan Villorio, Antonio Vilanova, and Jorge Hernández among others. Rioja studied Hispanic Letters and has published the short story collection La Muerte Niña (El Hechicero Books), which includes the story “La Casa de Chayo” (“Chayo’s House”) adapted into an IMCINE award-winning short film by Guissepe Solano. Carmen has also published poetry in magazines and periodicals; the poem Vuelo Aerostático sobre Teotihuacán (Air Balloon Flight over Teotihihuacán) is included in the anthology Corazón Prestado: El Mundo Precolombino en la Poesía de los Siglos XIX y XX (Borrowed Heart: The Pre-Columbian World in the Poetry of the 19th & 20th Centuries). Her work has appeared in the newspaper El Corregidor of Querétaro, and she served as co-producer and host of the literary critique radio show Sancho Panza de Cabeza. Currently, she writes her blog Hojas al Rio (Leaves on the River). She is also a conservation artist specializing in colonial and archaeological collections, and works in cultural and art promotion. Her involvement