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" When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated. "

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" I think probably the thing I'm worst at is the most ephemeral stuff, like blogs. I find it really hard to write. And I'm often been asked to write columns for papers in Peru. And I can't. I would die. There's no way I could write a column. "

Daniel Alarcon

Think

Hard

Die

" For fiction, I'm not particularly nationalistic. I'm not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work. "

" At the most basic level, I appreciate writers who have something to say. "

" How emigration is actually lived - well, this depends on many factors: education, economic station, language, where one lands, and what support network is in place at the site of arrival. "

" As a boy, I wanted to be the Peruvian Diego Maradona. Sadly, Peru hasn't made the World Cup since 1982, so I guess I did well to choose something different. "

" I have to really think hard about how to structure sentences, and do more mapping when I sit down to write, so it does impose a certain discipline, intellectual and linguistic. "

" I began visiting Lima's prisons back in 2007, when my first novel, 'Lost City Radio,' was published in Peru. "

" I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English. "

" It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art. "

" I'm a sucker for any band named after a work of literature. Los de Abajo take their name from Mariano Azuela's famous novel 'The Underdogs,' and that says a lot about who they are and the music they make. "

" I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. I'm thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country. "

" I love to walk through the streets of Jesus Maria and Pueblo Libre. The Spanish colonial buildings are in bright colors, two stories high, with these intricate wooden, windowed balconies. "

" 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. "

" Peru is a country where more than half the people would emigrate if given the chance. That's half the population that is willing to abandon everything they know for the uncertainty of a life in a foreign land, in another language. "

" I love the novel because it's like a love affair. You can just fall into it and keep going, and you never know where it's going to take you. "

" I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language. "

" Publication in 'The New Yorker' meant everything, and it's no exaggeration to say that it changed my life. "

" I like radio because you can do an hour-long interview and then three days later have a finished piece. "

Daniel Alarcon

Radio

Three

" Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one. "