Creative Arts and the English and Philosophy Department, with support from the Office of Student Life, are thrilled to announce that Pulitzer-finalist Ingrid Rojas Contreras is visiting MCC via Zoom on Wednesday, March 13, from 12 to 12:50 PM. She also pre-recorded a reading of her work that faculty and students can view and share.
Contreras is a force. In her recent memoir, she looks at her upbringing in Colombia with special emphasis on the relationship between her grandfather, who was a curandero, and her mother. The book looks at tensions surrounding colonization, patriarchy, and memory, all with profound detail and honesty.
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Creative Nonfiction Workshop, Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 12 to 12:50 p.m.
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Join via Zoom
Please email Maria Brandt (mbrandt@monroecc.edu) with any questions.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Hailed as “original, politically daring, and passionately written” by Vogue, her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree earned the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an Indie Next Pick, and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection. Her debut memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds is a National Book Award Finalist in Non-fiction and was named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, People, NPR, Vanity Fair, Boston Globe, among others. Rojas Contreras brings readers into her childhood, where her grandfather, Nono, was a renowned community healer gifted with “the secrets”: powers that included talking to the dead, fortunetelling, treating the sick, and moving the clouds. The Man Who Could Move Clouds interweaves enchanting family lore, Colombian history, and a reckoning with the bounds of reality. Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ essays and short stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. She has received numerous awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, the Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Rojas Contreras is a Visiting Writer at the University of San Francisco.