Fernanda Melchor

Fernanda Melchor (born 1982, Veracruz, Mexico) is a Mexican writer best known for her 2017 novel Hurricane Season for which she won the 2019 Anna Seghers Prize and a place on the shortlist for the 2020 International Booker Prize.

The writer has published literature including novels, chronicles, essays, cultural studies, and television story-writing. Falsa liebre (2013), Aquí no es Miami (2013), Hurricane Season (2017), and Páradais (2021) among many others which have been found in every part of Latin America, Europe, and the United States and have been translated into several languages.

Life and career Fernanda Melchor was born in the municipality of Boca del Río, in Veracruz.

Melchor graduated with a degree in Journalism from the Universidad Veracruzana where she was Coordinator of Communication of the Veracruz-Del Río campus.

Melchor has published fiction and nonfiction in The Paris Review, La Palabra y el Hombre, Letras Libres, Excélsior, Replicante, Milenio semanal, Le Monde diplomatique, Vice Latinoamérica, GQ Latinoamérica and Vanity Fair Latinoamerica. She began her writing career in 2013 with the publication of Aquí no es Miami (2013), a collection of literary journalism, and Falsa Liebre (2013), her first novel.

Hurricane Season —a novel based on the murder of a witch in a small town in Melchor's home state, Veracruz—was featured as one of the best novels in Mexico in 2017 The book has been translated into German by Angelica Ammar and into English by Sophie Hughes. It won the 2020 International Literature Award of the Haus der Kulturen in Germany, and was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize.

In 2015, Melchor was included in a Conaculta's anthology as one of the featured Mexican authors under 40 years old.

In 2018, Melchor won the PEN Mexico Award for Literary and Journalistic Excellence.

In 2019, Melchor was awarded the International Literature Award as well as the Anna Seghers-Preis along with the German writer Joshua Gross.

Melchor's 2021 book, Paradais, translated by Sophie Hughes, was shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prize.

In September 2023 the English translation of Aquí no es Miami (This is Not Miami) was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

In 2024, she received the Ryszard Kapuściński Award, an international literary prize in the genre of literary reportage, for her book Aquí no es Miami (This is Not Miami).

Works

Novels

2013 – Falsa liebre 2017 – Temporada de huracanes 2021 – Páradais

Chronicles, Essays, and Nonfiction

2013 – Aquí no es Miami 2014 – México 20: New Voices, Old Traditions 2018 – Nuevas voces de la narrativa mexicana

English Translations (by Sophie Hughes)

2020 – Hurricane Season 2022 – Paradais 2023 – This Is Not Miami

Translations by Fernanda Melchor

2016 – Circunstancias atenuantes, by David Lida 2016 – El informe rojo, by William Ryan 2022 – The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros 2018 – The Line Becomes a River, by Francisco Cantú 2017 – The Mothers, by Brit Bennett 2019 – The Plotters, by Un-Su Kim 2017 – The Ordinary Seaman, by Francisco Goldman 2017 – Mothers, by Affinity Konar 2016 – Monsignor Quixote, by Graham Greene

Adaptations and Audiovisual Works

2021 – Somos (television show) 2023 – Hurricane Season (film adaptation)

Awards and honors Winner of the First Essay Contest on by the CNDH, 2002 Winner of the Literary Virtuality Casa de Letras, National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2007 Winner of the Journalism Award of the Journalism Foundation Rubén Pabello Acosta, 2009 Winner of the Chronicle National Award Dolores Guerrero, 2011 Winner of the Pen Club Prize for Journalistic and Literary Excellence, 2018 Winner of the International Literature Award, 2019 Winner of the Anna Seghers-Preis, 2019 for Hurricane Season Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020 for Hurricane Season Shortlisted for the Dublin International Literary Awards 2021 for Hurricane Season Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022 for Paradais Winner of the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for "This is not Miami", 2024