La Habana, Cuba, 1986
Dainerys Machado Vento is a writer, journalist and literary researcher. She is the author of the short story book Las noventa Habanas (Katakana, 2019) and her stories have appeared in several anthologies published in Mexico and the United States. In 2021 she was listed by Granta magazine as one of the world's best writers in Spanish under thirty-five years of age. She is currently studying for a Ph.D. in modern languages and literatures at the University of Miami, where she is a grant holder at the Center for the Humanities. Dainerys Machado is a teacher in Hispanic American literature at the Colegio de San Luis A.C. in Mexico and she holds a degree in journalism from the University of Havana in Cuba. Her academic and journalistic articles have been published in various magazines such as Cuadernos Americanos, Hemisférica y Decimonónica, Revista Horizontum and La Gaceta de Cuba. Her awards include the 2016 State of San Luis Potosí Prize for Journalism.
Bibliography
One of the most formidable voices on the current Latin American narrative scene.
Following the death of a mutual friend – known as the Lady – several women who periodically get together to tell and listen to each other’s stories, meet up on the same park bench where she used to convene them...
Read moreNon-fiction
Short stories and novellas
One of the most formidable voices on the current Latin American narrative scene.
Following the death of a mutual friend – known as the Lady – several women who periodically get together to tell and listen to each other’s stories, meet up on the same park bench where she used to convene them. One of them has entered a downward spiral of degrading, unsatisfactory sexual encounters owing to her inability to forget the great love of her life; Elena attends a gender reveal party with the idea of sabotaging it; Marta has returned full of prejudices from New York; Obdulia is a victim of her husband’s abuse and her town’s inherent racism; Magdalena is resigned to the transphobia of her in-laws; Soledad fantasizes about killing her mother after a lifetime of humiliations...
Selected by Granta as one of the best Spanish-language storytellers of this new generation, in Retratos de la orilla (Portraits from the Shore) Dainerys Machado deploys an irresistible array of voices where the female gaze is the true protagonist.
A powerful voice has arrived that offers a portrait as angry as it is entrancing of today's Cuba.
Women of all ages and social classes parade through the different Havanas in these stories. Dissatisfied, obdurate, desirous women. Women hooked on rum and porn. Women who desperately want to dance wildly all night at the disco and make out with strangers. Women who hate their mothers because they are always right, their husbands because they can’t get it up, and their mother-in-laws because they never approve of anything they cook. Women with an inner volcano about to erupt at any moment.
In her first book, with its irresistible foul-mouthed prose and bullet-proof irony, Dainerys Machado reveals herself to be one of the most irresistible voices of the new Latin American literature. She is one of the authors appearing in the Granta anthology published this year.
“Acid humour, in the style of Virgilio Piñera, lemonade with very little sugar to cope with the island’s sticky heat. […] This book is a testimony about the rise and fall of a town, a wake and a party. Singing and weeping, celebration and burial, but not forgetting." Vice-Versa Magazine
Non-fiction
Anthology / Selection
En este número, publicado por Candaya, el lector descubrirá diferentes rasgos que singularizan a esta generación emergente y permiten vislumbrar algunas tendencias de la literatura de los próximos años: una especial atención a las cualidades sonoras del lenguaje escrito; la renuncia al español «neutro» con el propósito de captar las cadencias y tonalidades de las diferentes variantes geográficas y sociales de nuestra lengua; la relevancia del humor, la sátira y la ironía; la presencia de las culturas y cosmogonías indígenas; el compromiso ante las desigualdades sociales (con especial atención a la infancia golpeada) y la denuncia de la corrupción y los abusos de poder; la meditación sobre la literatura y el arte, etc.
A través de trece relatos inquietantes, Ellas cuentan nos revela mundos oscuros y siniestros: una morgue en San Juan, un arrabal caraqueño, una aterradora prisión bonaerense. Esta colección reúne la obra de autoras latinoamericanas que destacan en el ámbito de la literatura escrita y publicada en español dentro de Estados Unidos: voces que aportan retratos únicos e imprescindibles al terreno literario de la ficción criminal.
"América es un continente en movimiento sin variar de posición, es un espacio dinámico sin desplazarse, es un universo que fluye siempre en su punto de partida. No es una contradicción, no hay oposición en estas sentencias: sobre una anclada porción del mundo toda una amalgama de historias, pueblos, naciones y personas danzan sin pasos aprendidos en un movimiento que no cesa. Y este movimiento, este cambio permanente, implica un elemento presente en nuestras vidas de forma clara: el arraigo, el desarraigo. Arraigo/Desarraigo es un proyecto sin ánimo de lucro que busca identificar a jóvenes talentos, formar redes e impulsar la riqueza de las letras americanas, desde el Canadá hasta la Argentina."
Prizes
2016 - Premio Estatal de Periodismo San Luis Potosí (Mexico)