MINNEAPOLIS, MN. January 9, 2019 — We are pleased to announce that Valeria Luiselli has joined Coffee House Press as a contributing editor. Luiselli has already been instrumental in bringing authors such as Daniel Saldaña París and Naja Marie Aidt to Coffee House and has taken an advising role in the acquisition of books by Rodrigo Márquez Tizano and Roque Larraquy.
“Coffee House Press has been redefining the very notion of American literature,” Luiselli said. “More than a house that publishes books in translation, it is a place where books from different languages come into dialogue.”
“From the beginning of our working relationship, it became clear that there was a very strong aesthetic connection between us,” said Chris Fischbach, publisher of Coffee House and U.S. editor of Luiselli’s first four books. “Valeria and I have always had great conversations about new authors, especially those from Latin America that she thought I would like and should consider for our list, so I asked her if she’d be interested in making the relationship a little more formal. We’re pleased she said yes.”
Luiselli’s role will be that of a behind-the-scenes adviser, and it won’t be apparent which authors she has suggested the press consider.
Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. A novelist (The Story of My Teeth, Faces in the Crowd, and the forthcoming Lost Children Archive) and essayist (Sidewalks, Tell Me How It Ends), her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Harper’s, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She is the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and an American Book Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize. She has been a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and the recipient of a Bearing Witness Fellowship from the Art for Justice Fund.