Rosa Beltrán

Rosa María Beltrán Álvarez (born Mexico City, 15 March 1960 ) is a Mexican novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator.

Beltrán, born in Mexico City in 1960, has a BA in the Hispanic Language and Literatures from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a PhD in Comparative Literature from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

She was awarded with funding from FONCA in 1991, from CME in 1993, and from the Fulbright Program.

She has taught courses and seminars in Mexico and abroad and delivered keynote addresses at numerous associations and universities, including ACLA, UCLA, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Colorado, Ramon Llull and others.

She has coordinated and led graduate-level classes in Comparative Literature at the UNAM’s Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, and she served as director of the Casa Universitario del Libro.

Her articles on literature and culture have appeared in several magazines worldwide and she contributes to the Revista de la Universidad and to Laberinto, the cultural supplement of the newspaper Milenio.

Beltrán’s work has been translated into Slovenian, French, English, Italian, and Dutch; included in multiple national and international anthologies; and recognized by numerous associations, such as the American Association of University Woman for her work and contributions to literature written by women (1992).

She is the author of the novels La corte de los ilusos (Premio Planeta 1995), El paraíso que fuimos (2002), Alta infidelidad (2006), Efectos secundarios (2012), El cuerpo expuesto (2013), and Radicales libres (2020).

She is also the author of the short story collections Amores que matan (1996) and Cuentos darwinianos (Universidad de Guadalajara 2020) and of the book-length essay Verdades virtuales (Debolsillo 2019).

In 1997 she won the Florence Fishbaum Award for her essay collection América sin americanismos/Re-evaluating the Idea of the Americas: Utopic, Dystopic and Apocalyptic Paradigms. Other awards include the Premio Planeta–Joaquín Mortiz de Novela 1995 for La corte de los ilusos; Premio Jóvenes Académicos de la UNAM 1997 in the category of creative writing; Reconocimiento Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz from the UNAM; and, recently, the 2022 José Emilio Pacheco Award granted by the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY) in conjunction with the FILEY and UC-Mexicanistas.

Her books have been the subject of essays and theses, and all of her novels have been reissued, some more than once.

She was the deputy director of La Jornada Semanal from 1999 to 2002 and has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores from 1997 to 2000.

She was the director of the Literature department at the UNAM and is actually the chair in Coordinación de Difusión Cultural at UNAM.

In 2009, she started the festival Fiesta del Libro y la Rosa, which has been held continuously since its inauguration, including two virtual editions in 2020 and 2021 with the participation of authors from all over the world.

On June 12, 2014, she was appointed as a member by the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua as the 36th Chair, becoming the tenth woman to hold this position.

As part of her admission speech to the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua in 2014, she discussed the ongoing relevance of the novel Cartucho, by Nellie Campobello, and the author’s astute reflections on the state of contemporary Mexico.

In 2021, she was invited by the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán to deliver the keynote address “Pandemia, arte y literatura” in commemoration of this institution’s 75-year anniversary.

Her essay, which chronicles the global quarantine and the experience of art over the first 18 months, will be published alongside other texts on the COVID-19 pandemic.

From 2016 until the pandemic, she and Mónica Lavín co-directed the program “Contraseñas” on Canal 22.

Beltrán has taught at UCLA, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ramon Llull University, University of Colorado and currently teaches in the graduate program in comparative literature at UNAM.

She was deputy director of La Jornada Semanal and is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.

She has worked for Milenio's cultural supplement, Laberinto. Beltrán currently serves as Director of Literature, Coordination of Cultural Outreach at the UNAM, one of the most important cultural centers and educational institutions in the Spanish-speaking world.

Beltrán's essays include the following.

In collaboration with other authors, she wrote (chronichles on Acapulco, Alfaguara 2019), El nacimiento del monstruo (on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, UNAM 2016), El cuerpo femenino y sus narrativas (UNAM 2016), and Jamás despejar las incógnitas (UNAM 2018).

In 2021, the FCE published her chronicle Acuérdate de Acapulco in Cuadernos del Viento.

Her novel Radicales libres (Penguin Random House, 2021) sold out two months after its publication in 2021 and is forthcoming in an English translation by Robin Myers to be co-published by Hablemos, escritoras and Katakana Editores.

Her Cuando las palabras no eran las cosas is forthcoming from Caminos de la Lectura.

Cómo y por qué empezamos a leer (UNAM 2022).

She is currently working on the essay collection La mujer del escritor (ten chronicles on the wives of classic novelists and their decisive contributions to their oeuvre).

She coordinated the anthology Sólo cuento, volumes I to X, as well as Crónica y Ensayo, published by the Dirección de Literatura, UNAM.

She has published texts in specialized and popular magazines such as the Revista de la Universidad de México; Revista Claustro de Sor Juana; Nexos; Gatopardo; Proceso; Hispanofila, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Revista Fundación Veracruzana; Revista: PMLA (My Modern Language Association); Casa de las Américas; Literal Latin American Voices; Revista Luvina; Revista Quién; and Revista ELLE, among others.

Her interviews, critical articles, and reviews have appeared in La Jornada, el Universal, El País, La Provincia (Guadalajara), El Norte (Monterrey), Reforma, and Viceversa (New York), among others.

Rosa Beltrán, Efectos literarios y el arte de narrar, ed.

Oswaldo Estrada, Bonilla Artiga Editores, a book on her work is coming soon.

In March 2020, she launched her project Conver@as, a podcast on the literature and themes encompassed by pandemics and quarantines throughout history.

As a cultural manager, she has organized series, literary festivals, and book fairs for over twelve years.