Daniel Contreras
Hector Jara
The content of this news item has been machine translated and may contain some inaccuracies with respect to the original content published in Spanish.
Our graduate from the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, the writer Dr. Richard Parra, has just won the 2021 National Literature Prize in the Short Story category with his book Resina. Inscribed in the 'dirty realism' of the beatnik tradition, the work consists of a set of uncomfortable and violent stories about people marginalised and displaced by society who live outside the legal or moral. Through colloquial language, full of pop culture references, the author launches a subtle critique of Peruvian society.
Parra, who lives in New York, says she took the award as a pleasant surprise. "The pandemic was terrible for me. I couldn't write or do research. When I got the news, I was happy. Also, from an economic point of view, it will help me to finish my current project," says the writer, who also says he is happy to be able to reach more readers.
PUCP graduate and winner of the National Literature Prize 2021
Resina was published in 2019. Parra says the work grew out of a book of short stories he wrote a few years ago. In the end, most of the material was discarded, but when the author returned to Lima, "the stories came to life with the language of the people, the political and social reality, as I moved through the streets and lived Peruvian life with my friends".
For the author, his choice to portray marginal and violent characters in the book has a lot to do with his childhood. Parra grew up in La Victoria. "In the neighbourhood where I lived, I would go out and there were these characters. They were like myths. Children and young people somehow idealise them. I tried not to make a work of idealisation, but of social and political contemplation," he explains.
In "Chevy 64", the story with which the book begins, the writer portrays a group of juvenile gang members addicted to drugs. "I try to give them a social thickness. This gang member is the product of a crisis and this violence is authorised by a system that allows it", says the author.
Although it is difficult to imagine Parra in any other facet than the literary, he initially entered the PUCP to become an engineer. It was in the rotundas and corridors of the Faculty of Science and Engineering that Parra discovered his passion for literature. "I think I was perhaps the worst engineering student in the history of the PUCP," he jokes with a chuckle. Even so, in his brief time at the university, the writer took away several lessons. "There I learned a more rational and practical way of thinking, with concrete objectives," he says.
From his time as a literature student, the writer recalls the social experience he had there, as well as the literary experience. "I remember that we used to form reading groups with my classmates. That socialisation was important," he says. "If there is no conversation, if there is no dialogue or contradiction, nothing will come out except a kind of self-referential text," he says.
Parra is aware that making a name for yourself in the literary market is not easy. If he had to give advice to young, budding writers, it would be, above all, to be honest. "The strength and uniqueness of your work lies in the materials that interest you, that you are interested in writing about. I think you have to strive for a certain originality and that originality lies in your own experience," he says.
Our graduate Richard Parra (Lima, 1976) holds a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from New York University (NYU). He published the nouvelles Necrofucker and La pasión de Enrique Lynch (2014), the novel Los niños muertos ( 2015), the book of short stories Contemplación del abismo (2nd ed., 2018), and the essay La tiranía del Inca. El Inca Garcilaso y la escritura política en el Perú colonial (1568-1617). He was also winner of the 2014 Copé Prize.
Thus, in consecutive years, a PUCP graduate has won the National Literature Prize. Last year, the writer Dr. Victoria Guerrero won the award in the non-fiction category with her book Y la muerte no tendrá dominio (And Death Will Have No Dominion).
In this edition of the National Literature Prize, two members of the PUCP community received special mentions. These were our graduate and teacher Lorenzo Helguero Morales in the Poetry category with his work Fundación, and our graduate and student of the Master's Degree in Creative Writing Augusto Effio Ordóñez in the Short Story category with his work Algunos cuerpos celestes.
