Join Colombian author Gloria Susana Esquivel and Mexico City–based translator and writer Robin Myers in conversation about the art of translation, hosted by the University of Texas Press during #AWP21. Moderated by UT Press International Rights Manager Angelica Lopez-Torres, this conversation will explore how both the original Spanish and the English translation bring to life Gloria Esquivel's first novel, Animals at the End of the World.

If you'd like to order Animals at the End of the World before the event, use discount code AWP21 for 30% off the book and any other book on our website www.utexaspress.com.

Animals at the End of the World is a poignant tale of childhood imagination that follows lonely six-year-old Inés as she explores both her fears about the outer world and the even greater mysteries of family life. The book is the fourth in the University of Texas Press's Latin American Literature in Translation series, which publishes translations of contemporary Latin American literary fiction. The series aims to explore the realities of life in North, Central, and South America through novels that reveal the hopes and struggles of the peoples in these countries in recent decades.

About the book

Animals at the End of the World begins with an explosion, which six-year-old Inés mistakes for the end of the world that she has long feared. In the midst of the chaos, she meets the maid’s granddaughter, Mariá, who becomes her best friend and with whom she navigates the adult world in her grandparents’ confined house. Together, they escape the house and confront the “animals” that populate Bogotá in the 1980s. But Inés soon realizes she cannot count on either María or her preoccupied and conflicted parents. Alone, she must learn to decipher her outer and inner worlds, confronting both armies of beasts and episodes of domestic chaos. In the process, she also learns what it means to test boundaries, break rules, and cope with the consequences.

The first novel by Colombian author Gloria Susana Esquivel, Animals at the End of the World is a poetic and moving coming-of-age story that lingers long after its final page.

About the panelists

Gloria Susana Esquivel (Bogotá, Colombia) teaches in the creative writing master’s program at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Bogotá and has one published book of poems, El lado salvaje. Animals at the End of the World is her first novel.

Robin Myers is a Mexico City–based translator, poet, and author of Conflations/Amalgama, among other collections published in Mexico, Argentina, and Spain.