Juan Cárdenas

Juan Cárdenas (1978) is a Colombian art critic, curator, translator, and author of seven works of fiction, most recently the story collection Volver a comer del árbol de la ciencia and the novel Elástico de sombra. He has translated the works of such writers as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Gordon Lish, David Ohle, J. M. Machado de Assis, and Eça de Queirós. In 2014, his novel Los estratos received the Otras Voces Otros Ámbitos Prize. In 2017, he was named one of the thirty-nine best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine by the Hay Festival in Bogotá. Cárdenas currently coordinates the masters program in creative writing at the Caro y Cuervo Institute in Bogotá, where he works as a professor and researcher.

2023 National Book Award Longlisted for The Devil of the Provinces
2021 PEN Translation Award Finalist for Ornamental
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"[T]he rhythm of Cárdenas’s writing compels and reassures, as if driven by the very humanity the lab has helped suppress.”

—Nathan Scott McNamara, The New York Times on Ornamental
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"A supremely talented and original writer."

—Julianne Pachico, The Guardian
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"Ornamental leaves us with a fresh understanding of the creation of art and the nature of meaning-making.”

—Dashiel Carrera, Los Angeles Review of Books
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Books by Juan Cárdenas