About New Writing Series

UC San Diego’s New Writing Series invites local, national, and international authors to read and perform throughout the academic year. Welcoming a wide range of authors and genres, including playwrights, poets, translators, essayists, critics, fiction writers, and performance artists, the New Writing Series celebrates both emerging and established award-winning writers. Readers also include Department of Literature faculty and graduate students in the MFA Program in Writing. The readings are followed by in-depth question and answer periods that center on craft and artistic practice. 

The New Writing Series is co-sponsored by the Department of Literature, the UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives, the Chicanx and Latinx Studies (CLS), Department of Ethnic Studies, Critical Gender Studies (CGS), Global South Studies (GSS), and Latin American Studies (LAS).

Recordings of New Writing Series readings, as well as its predecessor, the New Poetry Series, which dates back to 1972, are part of the Archive for New Poetry in UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives.

This New Writing Series event features readings from Lina Meruane.

Lina Meruane (Chile, 1970) is a writer and holds a doctorate in literature from NYU. Her fiction includes two collections of short stories (Las Infantas and Avidez) and five novels (Póstuma, Cercada, Fruta podrida, Sangre en el ojo, and Sistema nervioso), translated into twelve languages.

Her non-fiction works include two essays on the body (Viajes virales and Zona ciega), two feminist essays (Contra los hijos, Esa cosa animal, and Coloquio de las quiltras), the autobiographical essay Señales de nosotros, and three books on the Middle East: Palestina en pedazos (an expanded version of her earlier Volverse Palestina, winner of the Chilean-Arab Institute of Culture Prize in 2015), the lyrical essay Palestina por ejemplo, and her writings on genocide collected in Matarlo todo. Her shorter essays are compiled in Ensayo general and Tantos frentes.

She has also ventured into playwriting with a theatrical adaptation (Un lugar donde caerse muerta) and two plays (Esa cosa animal and Hamelin). Her work has been recognized with the José Donoso Ibero-American Literature Prize (Chile 2023), the Blue Metropolis Prize (Canada 2023), the Cálamo Prize (Spain 2016), the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (Mexico 2012), and the Anna Seghers Prize (Germany 2011), as well as writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (USA 2004), the NEA (USA 2010), the DAAD (Germany 2017), and Casa Cien Años de Soledad (Mexico 2021), among others.

She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence for the Master of Arts in Creative Writing in Spanish at New York University.

Our events are FREE and open to the public!