“Naughty” E-Magazine Takes Latin American Literature Seriously

By Claudio Iván Remeseira | Posted Sunday, August 25, 2013, 3:01 p.m. ET

NBC Latino

Literary magazines are a cherished tradition of Latin American culture. A great example is Sur, the legendary journal that during the 1940s and 50s helped disseminate the masterpieces of 20th century Modernism in the regio, preparing in this way the ground for the literary Boom of the 1960s.

Now, thanks to the Internet and the expansion of online media, today there is a renaissance of those magazines—in digital format. And one of the most successful examples comes from upstate New York – and it is bilingual.

Traviesa–that’s its name—is the brainchild of Bolivian writer Rodrigo Hasbún and his Guatemalan colleague Rodrigo Fuentes, both doctoral students at Cornell University. “We met at a writers’ workshop and started talking about the dearth of contemporary Spanish-language fiction available in the U.S.,” say Hasbún and Fuentes in a joint e-mail response. Some of those writers—like Hasbún himself, listed one of the Best Young Spanish-language novelists by Granta Magazine—are among the most celebrated voices of the newest Latin American literature.

Read more at NBC Latino.