Juan Villoro is Mexico’s most prolific, prize-winning author, playwright, journalist, and screenwriter. His books have been translated into multiple languages. Several of his books have appeared in English, including his celebrated 2016 essay collection on soccer brought out by Restless Books, God Is Round. Villoro lives in Mexico City and has been a visiting lecturer at Yale, Princeton and Standford universities.
ABOUT
Writer and journalist, Juan Villoro was born in Mexico City in 1956. He has been a professor at UNAM, and a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Pompeu Fabra university in Barcelona, as well as at the New Journalism Foundation, created by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He is a columnist for Reforma newspaper (Mexico) and has written for international media such as The New York Times(US), El País (Spain) y El Mercurio (Chile), among others. He was director of the weekly cultural supplement for La Jornada (Mexico).
He studied Sociology at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM). He is an honorary doctor from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. Since 2014 he has been a member of El Colegio Nacional.
In 2012 he won the José Donoso Ibero-American Prize and in 2018 the Manuel Rojas Prize, both awarded in Chile, for his work as a whole. Among the awards, in Mexico, he has received the Mazatlán Prize for Literature for his book of literary essays Personal effects, and the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for his book of short stories The house loses. He received the Herralde Prize in Spain for his novel The witness; in Argentina the ACE Award for his play Life philosophy and in Cuba the José María Arguedas Award for his novel The Reef. His journalistic work has been recognized with the King of Spain International Journalism Award, the City of Barcelona Award, the Manuel Vázquez Montalbán International Journalism Award, as well as the Fernando Benítez Tribute at the International Book Fair.
His novel for young people The wild book has sold more than a million copies.
His most recent books are Professor Zipper and the missing words (2022), The land of great promise (2021),
Extraordinary exam (2020) and Horizontal vertigo. A City Called Mexico (2018), finalist at the Kirkus prize 2021.
His work has been translated into numerous languages.
