Missing Persons, Animals, and Artists
Free and open to the public. Poesía en Abril: Poetry reading Book presentation by Roberto Ransom A Conversation and Reading with Mexican author Roberto Ransom and translator Daniel Shapiro. Moderated by Olivia Maciel Edelman. Elegant prose and imaginative ironies bring these compelling short stories to life in this first English-language collection from Mexican author Roberto Ransom. Each of the ten stories is filled with fascinating, yet enigmatic and sometimes elusive characters: an alligator in a bathtub, an invisible toad who appears only to a young boy, the beautiful redheaded daughter of a mushroom collector, a deceased journalist who communicates in code, and even Leonardo Da Vinci himself, meditating on The Last Supper. One of Mexico’s most original writers, Ransom explores these characters’ emotional depths as they move through their fantastical worlds that, while at times unfamiliar, offer brave and profound insights into our own. Roberto Ransom is an award-winning Mexican writer whose published work includes novels and collections of short stories, poetry, and essays, as well as children’s literature. His novel A Tale of Two Lions has also been translated into English. He is professor at the Autonomous University of Chihuahua. This collection of short stories has been translated with great care by Daniel Shapiro. Daniel Shapiro is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Child with a Swan's Wings, as well as a translator of Latin American literature. His translation of Tomás Harris’s Cipango received a starred review in Library Journal. He received grants from PEN America and the National Endowment for the Arts to translate Roberto Ransom’s Missing Persons, Animals and Artists. He is a distinguished lecturer and editor of Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas at The City College of New York, CUNY.