James Cañón

Colombian-born Author James Cañón (James Canon)

James Cañón is a Colombian author.^[1]

Born and raised in Ibagué, Colombia, James Cañón received his B.A in advertising from Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano of Bogotá. He moved to New York in the mid 1990s to study English, and later earned his MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. His short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines in the U.S., Belgium and France. He lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.

Works

Cañón's debut novel, Tales from the Town of Widows, (ISBN 978-0061140389) was originally written in English, his second language. It was first published in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. by Harper Collins in 2007. Praised internationally as "An important contribution to American literature," the novel tells the story of Mariquita, a Colombian village that's forever altered the day a band of communist guerrillas takes out all but three of its men. Left to fend for themselves, the abandoned women slowly emerge from their supporting roles as wives and daughters to become unwitting founders of a radically socialist society, a metamorphosis that Kirkus Reviews has described as "Slyly pushing the envelope that Aristophanes opened with Lysistrata." Cañón's novel has been published in over twenty countries and translated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hebrew, Korean, Turkish, Arabic, Croatian and Polish. The film adaptation of it, called Without Men, was released in 2011. The cast includes Eva Longoria and Chris Slater, and was directed by Gabriela Tagliavini.

Awards and honors

• Prix du Premier Meilleur Roman Étranger, 2008 (Paris)
• Prix des Lecteurs Vincennes, 2008 (Vincennes)
• Prix des Lecteurs du Télégramme Finalist, 2009 (Brittany)
• Edmund White Fiction Award Finalist, 2008 (New York)
• Lambda Award for Best Debut Fiction Finalist, 2008 (Los Angeles)
• One Brown Book, One Nation Program Finalist, 2008 (U.S.)
• New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Fellowship, 2008 (New York)
• Queens Council on the Arts Award, 2008 (New York)
• A School Library Journal's Best Adult Book for High School Students, 2008 (U.S.)
• A Kirkus Reviews’ Top Pick for Reading Groups, 2007 (U.S.)
• Stanford Calderwood Fiction Fellowship, 2007 (New York)
• Urban Artist Initiative Fiction Award, 2006 (New York)
• Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative Fiction Finalist, 2002 (Switzerland)
• National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts Award, 2002 & 2001 (U.S.)
• Henfield Foundation Prize for Excellence in Fiction, 2001 (U.S.)

References

External links

• James Cañón's Official Web Site
• Washington Post (Review)
• The New Yorker (Review)
• Revista de Letras (Review/Spanish)
• El Espectador (Interview/Spanish)