Discuss “Predictions and Presentiments”, by Valeria Luiselli
Details
[We meet every Sunday after a new New Yorker magazine is published.]
Greetings, Fictioneers!
On Sunday, February 15, 2025 at 4 pm CST/5 pm EST/3 pm MST/2 pm PST, on Zoom, we will discuss the New Yorker Fiction story from the issue dated February 16, 2026: “Predictions and Presentiments”, by Valeria Luiselli. This is Luiselli’s first New Yorker fiction.
- Read “Predictions and Presentiments” at this link. Try a private or incognito window if blocked by the New Yorker's paywall or through the Libby app via your local public library “card”.
- Want to listen to it? Use the “Listen to this story” audio module on the story page (42 minutes at 1x speed) or at this link (44:07 with intro and ads). Blocked from those? Try this link.
- The author interview, “Valeria Luiselli on Sound, Memory, and New Beginnings”, is at this link.
Valeria Luiselli (born August 16, 1983) is a Mexican-American author. She is the author of the book of essays Sidewalks and the novel Faces in the Crowd, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Luiselli's 2015 novel The Story of My Teeth was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Best Translated Book Award, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Fiction, and she was awarded the Premio Metropolis Azul in Montreal, Quebec. Luiselli's books have been translated into more than 20 languages, with her work appearing in publications including, The New York Times, Granta, McSweeney's, and The New Yorker. Her book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Luiselli's 2019 novel, Lost Children Archive won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
In 2014, Luiselli was the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 award. In 2019, she won a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a MacArthur "Genius Grant". In 2020, the Vilcek Foundation awarded her a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature and the Folio Prize.
Early life
Luiselli was born in Mexico City, and moved to Madison, Wisconsin, with her family at the age of two. Her father's work in NGOs and later as a diplomat moved the family to Costa Rica, South Korea, and South Africa. After her parents separated, she moved back to Mexico City with her mother at the age of 16. Luiselli attended UWC Mahindra College in India before returning to Mexico. She completed a BA in philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and then lived in Spain and France. At age 25, she moved to New York City to pursue a master's degree in latin american studies and a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University.
Career
After earning a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Luiselli moved to New York City to dance. She eventually studied comparative literature at Columbia University, where she completed a Ph.D. She teaches literature and creative writing at Bard College, collaborates as a writer with a number of art galleries, and has worked as a librettist for the New York City Ballet. She served as a juror for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2016.
Several of Luiselli's books are based on real-world experiences. The Story of My Teeth (2015) was first written in serial for workers in a Jumex juice factory in Mexico as part of a commission from Galería Jumex. Her nonfiction work Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions (2017) is based on her experiences volunteering as an interpreter for young Central American migrants seeking legal status in the United States. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism in 2017. Her work with asylum-seeking children from Latin America also informs the central theme in her 2019 novel Lost Children Archive.
Political involvement
Luiselli started a literacy program for girls in a detention center in upstate New York that focuses on creative writing. Luiselli is passionate about researching and writing about mass incarceration in the United States, with a focus on detention centers. She is working on a performance piece with the poet Natalie Diaz related to mass incarceration and violence against women.
Luiselli has been interested in writing about and working to improve the plight of asylum-seeking children from Latin America, a theme that is present in her 2020 novel, Lost Children Archive. She began writing Lost Children Archive in 2014 "as a loudspeaker for all of political rage" after having served as a court translator for children from Latin America involved in the migration crisis. The creation of this book was also a reaction to her daughter working to understand the migration crisis for herself. Before completing Lost Children Archive in 2019, Luiselli published Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions that uses the format of the questions she used in the court when interviewing the children, and includes her own experience with applying for a green card. The time spent writing the essay allowed her to write Lost Children Archive with "more open questions and open ends instead of political stances that are too loud and obvious by themselves".
Luiselli supports a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers and literary festivals. She was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions".
Personal life
Luiselli met the Mexican novelist Álvaro Enrigue after her writing teacher sent an essay she wrote to Enrigue, then an editor at the literary magazine Letras Libres. They began a romantic relationship and married in the early 2010s, but later separated. They have a daughter together, with whom Luiselli lives in New York City.
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- from Wikipedia English's Valeria_Luiselli page , footnote marks and links removed.