‘Telling the Silenced Stories’ of the Southern Cone: An Interview with Carolina De Robertis

Year 2015, Issue: 42, 29 - 46, 01.10.2015

Karen Wooley Martin

Abstract

Carolina De Robertis is the author of two internationally best-selling novels, The Invisible Mountain 2009 and Perla 2012 , which have been translated into sixteen languages. The Invisible Mountain was awarded the Rhegium Julii Debut Prize and was a finalist for the International Latino Book Award and the California Book Award. Her work has been published in Zoetrope: Allstory, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly, The Indiana Review, and n + 1. She was also selected as a contributing author for the anthologies Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships 2012 and Immigrant Voices: 21st Century Stories 2014 . De Robertis has also emerged as a respected and skilled literary translator. Her translation of Roberto Ampuero’s novel The Neruda Case was nominated for the 2013 Northern California Book Award in Translation, and her translation of Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award in 2009. De Robertis was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2012. She holds the MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and has taught at the University of San Francisco and the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing. Prior to publishing The Invisible Mountain, she taught Latino immigrant children in an inner-city school, and then worked in women’s advocacy for a decade in California, where she founded the first Latina services program at the rape crisis center where she worked.