ANA MARÍA SHUA

Ana María Shua was born in 1951 in Buenos Aires. While attending the National College of Buenos Aires, she published her first collection of poems, El sol y yo (The Sun and I, 1967), for which she received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. She earned a degree in literature from the University of Buenos Aires. During her exile in France in the late 1970s, she worked for the Spanish magazine Cambio 16.

Upon returning to Argentina, she published her first novel, Soy paciente (I Am a Patient, 1980), for which she received the Losada Publishing House Award. The following year, she published her first short story collection, Los días de pesca (Fishing Days), followed by the novel that brought her fame, Los amores de Laurita (Laurita’s Loves, 1984). That same year, she published the microfiction collection La sueñera (The Dreamer). This format became her trademark and earned her the reputation of the “queen of the shortest story.” Since then, she has published the following collections of microfiction: Casa de Geishas (Geisha House, 1992), Botánica del caos (Botany of Chaos, 2000), Temporada de fantasmas (Season of Ghosts, 2004), Cazadores de letras (Letter Hunters, 2009), Fenómenos de circo (Circus Phenomena, 2011), Todos los universos posibles (All Possible Universes, 2017), La guerra (The War, 2019), and Microfantabulosas (2021). A jury from Spain, Mexico, and Argentina awarded her the Ibero-American Juan José Arreola Prize for Microfiction.

In addition to Fishing Days, she has published three other short story collections: Viajando se conoce gente (You Meet People While Travelling, 1988), Como una buena madre (Like a Good Mother, 2001), and El árbol de la mujer dragón y otros cuentos (The Dragon Woman Tree and Other Stories, 2013). Her collected stories were published in 2009 in the book Que tengas una vida interesante (May You Have an Interesting Life).

In 1994, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write the novel El libro de los recuerdos (The Book of Memories), about the life of a Jewish family in Argentina. She has worked as a journalist and screenwriter. She also writes books for children, in which humour and folklore intertwine.

Her novel La muerte como efecto secundario (Death as a Side Effect, 1997) was included among the 100 best novels published in the previous twenty-five years at the Spanish Language Congress in Cartagena. Since 2007, she has published the following novels: El peso de la tentación (The Weight of Temptation), Contra el tiempo (Against Time, 2013), and Hija (Daughter, 2016).

Her works have been translated into more than 15 languages.