Yuri Herrera

Yuri Herrera is a writer born in Actopan, Hidalgo, México, and he writes in both Spanish and English. His first novel, Trabajos del reino (trans. Kingdom Cons), won the Premio Binacional de Novela Joven 2003 and received the “Otras voces, otros ámbitos” prize for the best novel published in Spain in 2008; his second novel, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo (Signs Preceding the End of the World) was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. His third novel is La transmigración de los cuerpos (Transmigration of Bodies). The three novels have been translated into multiple languages and published in English.

In 2016, he shared with translator Lisa Dillman the Best Translated Book Award for the translation of Signs Preceding the End of the World. In 2016, Rice University and Literal Publishing published Talud, a collection of his short stories. The same year, he received the Anna Seghers Prize at the Academy of Arts of Berlin for the body of his work. His latest books are the historical narrative A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, and the sci-fi short stories collection Diez planetas.

He received his BA in Political Science at UNAM, MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught literary theory, creative writing, and Latin American literature at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico and at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte before coming to Tulane University, where he is an Associate Professor.

Excerpt from Signs Preceding the End of the World

–Yuri Herrera

“She had no reason to go see Mr. Double-U first, but a longing for water led her to the steam where he spent his time. She could feel the earth all the way under her nails as though she’d been the one to go down the hole.

The sentry was a proud, sanguine boy who Makina had once shucked. It had happened in the awkward way those things so often do, but since men, all of them, are convinced that they’re such straight shooters, and since it was clear that with her he’d misfired, from then on the boy hung his head whenever he ran into her. Makina strolled past him and he came out of his booth as if to say No one gets through, or rather Not you, you’re not getting through, but his impulse lasted all of three seconds, because she didn’t stop and he didn’t dare say any of those things and could only raise his eyes authoritatively once she’d already gone by and was entering the Turkish baths.

Mr. Double-U was a joyful sight to see, all pale roundness furrowed with tiny blue veins; Mr. Double-U stayed in the steam room. The pages of the morning paper were plastered to the tiles and Mr. Double-U peeled them back one by one as he progressed in his reading. He looked at Makina, unsurprised. What’s up, he said. Beer? Yeah, Makina said. Mr. Double-U grabbed a beer from a bucket of ice at his feet, popped the top with his hand and passed it to her. They each uptipped the bottle and drank it all down, as if it were a contest. Then in silence they enjoyed the scuffle between the water inside and the water outside.”

Yuri Herrera

Excerpt from Signs Preceding the End of the World

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