Daniel Alarcon
Daniel Alarcon
Daniel Alarcónis a Peruvian-American author who lives in San Francisco, California; he has been a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College and a Visiting Writer at California College of the Arts. In Spring 2013, he was a Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program. Daniel Alarcón’s work has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere, and anthologized in Best American Non-Required Reading 2004 and 2005. He is Associate Editor of the Peruvian...
NationalityPeruvian
ProfessionAuthor
CountryPeru
Writing an op-ed feels like I'm taking the SAT. It's so hard. It feels like homework. And if it feels like homework, it just doesn't get done.
I want people to read good work. If I see someone reading a book by Lorrie Moore or Jennifer Egan, I'm psyched. If I see them reading X Latin American Writer Who Sucks, I'm not psyched. But in terms of news, I do think that's important.
When I was younger, I was able to write with music playing in the background, but these days, I can't. I find it distracting. Even when the music is just instrumental or has lyrics in a language I don't understand, the clash between the voices in my head and the song can be very disorienting.