BOMB's Americas Issue

Every year BOMB puts together a special “Americas Issue” focusing on art and literature from a different part of the Americas. This tends to mean South America, but you never know, maybe Canada will be—or was?—the focus at some point in time. Regardless, this is always one of my favorite issues of the year from this esteemed magazine that’s been around since 1981, and this year’s focus on Colombia and Venezuela keeps that tradition going.

Some of the highlights:

• Antonio Ungar (whose “My Grandrather’s Disintegration” is included in the “First Proof” supplement as translated by Katherine Silver) has an interview with Evelio Rosero, author of The Armies, which won this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize ;

• Conversation between Sergio Fajardo and Giancarlo Mazzanti about Medellin’s urban transformation;

• Discussion between Venezuela’s Ana Teresa Torres and Carmen Boullosa; and

• Interview with Juan Gabriel Vasquez (The Informers) conducted by Silvana Paternostro.

The “First Proof” literary supplement also has pieces by Luis Enrique Belmonte, Carolina Lozada, Victor Manuel Gaviria, Yolanda Pantin, Federico Vegas, Hector Abad Faciolince, Igor Barreto, and Luis Molina-Pantin. (You have to buy the actual magazine to get access to these pieces . . .)

I don’t know as much about contemporary Venezuelan literature, but Colombia is pretty hot these days with both Vasquez’s The Informers and Rosero’s The Armies getting a lot of good attention. Not to mention Santiago Gamboa . . .