The PALABRA Archive: Eduardo Lago

Author Eduardo Lago comments on his recording from the “PALABRA Archive” and discusses the literary connections between the US and Spain with guest writer David Hollander.

As part of the authors’ series organized by the IberoAmerican Cultural Attaches Association in collaboration with the Library of Congress, Spanish Author Eduardo Lago will discuss his recording from the PALABRA Archive, an interview that took place during the celebration of The Iberian Suite on March 14, 2015, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Lago, who has lived in the U.S. for more than thirty years will discuss the influence of American literature on his writing, and the general connections between Spanish and North American literature with novelist David Hollander.

Eduardo Lago

Eduardo Lago is a Spanish-born writer living in New York since his arrival in the U.S in 1987. The author of numerous essays, his work has focused on reinforcing the connections between Spanish, Latin American, Latinx and North American Literature. In 2006, he won the Premio Nadal, Spain’s oldest and most prestigious literary award, for his first novel, Llámame Brooklyn (Call Me Brooklyn, 2013). Lago was the Executive Director of the Cervantes Institute in New York between 2006 and 2011.

An important aspect of his work is the series of in-depth interviews he has conducted over decades with some of the most important American novelists, such as Norman Mailer, John Updike, John Barth, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, James Salter, David Foster Wallace, and Richard Powers, among many others. Most of them were published in the Spanish newspaper El País. After his years at the Cervantes Institute, he returned to teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, where he has been a tenured member of the faculty since 1993. Walt Whitman ya no vive aquí (2019), a collection of essays on North American Literature is his most recent published book. A lengthy segment of his latest novel, Siempre supe que te volvería a ver, Aurora Lee (2013) is currently being translated into English.

David Hollander

David Hollander is the author of Anthropica and L.I.E., a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in dozens of print and online forums, including McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, Fence, Agni, The New York Times Magazine, Poets & Writers, Post Road, The Collagist, Unsaid, The Black Warrior Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Swink. His work has been adapted for film and frequently anthologized, most notably in Best American Fantasy 2 and 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11th.