Daniel Alarcón (born 1977 in Lima, Peru) is an author who lives in Oakland, California, where he is the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College and Visiting Writer at California College of the Arts.
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. His non-fiction has appeared in Salon.com and Eyeshot, and he is Associate Editor of the Peruvian magazine Etiqueta Negra. He edited a portfolio for the magazine A Public Space on the writing of Peru. He is a former Fulbright Scholar to Peru.
Alarcón, a native of Peru, was raised, from the age of 3, in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S., and is an alumnus of Indian Springs School in Shelby County, Alabama. He was selected for the Telluride Association Summer Program, and later earned a bachelors degree in anthropology from Columbia University and a masters from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has studied in Ghana and taught in New York City.
His first book War by Candlelight was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award. He was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, nominated "One of 21 Young American Novelists" under 35 by Granta magazine, and one of 39 under 39 Latin American Novelists.
His debut novel, Lost City Radio, was published January 30, 2007. Both of his books have been translated into Spanish. Lost City Radio has also been translated into Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Dutch and Greek (2008). The German translation of Lost City Radio received the International Literature Award (25,000 EUR to the author; 10,000 EUR to the translator, Ms. Friedericke Meltendorf) from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
War by Candlelight: Stories (2005) ISBN 0060594780 (hdbk), ISBN 0060594802 (pbbk). Translated to Spanish by Rayo: Guerra en la Penumbra in 2005 and by Alfaguara: Guerra à la Luz de las Velas 2006
"What kind of Latino am I?", Salon.com May 24, 2005
, Harper's Magazine September 2006
Lost City Radio (2007) ISBN 0060594799. Translated to Spanish: Radio Ciudad Perdida, Alfaguara, 2007.
Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue". A compilation of stories by Latin American writers. Co-edited with Diego Trelles Paz. Spring 2009
El Rey siempre esta por encima del pueblo Editorial Sexto Piso, Mexico City, Mexico, 2009. Published also in Lima Peru by Editorial Seix Barral, Planeta, 2009
Payasos. Film adaptation of "City of Clowns", a story which first appeared in The New Yorker in 2003. Lima, Peru, 2009.
Recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award in 2004 for fiction
Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship 2007
One of 21 Young American Novelists Granta, UK, 2007)
One of 39 under 39 Latino American Novelists (Hay Festival, Bogota, Colombia, 2007)
One of 7 finalists for the Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, Mercantile Library For Fiction, 2007
Recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship in 2007
One of 37 under 36 selected by the Smithsonian Magazine (Fall Special Issue, 2007) as Young American Innovators in the Arts and Sciences
Lost City Radio has made the lists of best fiction for 2007 of the Washington Post, Booklist, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Financial Times (London).
Alabama Library Association Award for Fiction, Birmingham, Alabama, 2008
2008 Pen USA award for Lost City Radio, Los Angeles, CA
2009 International Literature Award — House of World Cultures (Berlin, Germany)
The "Idiot President" has been selected for the best short stories and a narrative about describing his traveling in Palestine for the best travel stories. Both in 2009.