Gina Balibrera

Gina Balibrera earned an MFA in Prose from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers' Program, where she was also a postgraduate fellow. She’s been awarded grants from the Gould Center, the Rackham Institute, a Tyson Award, the Aura Estrada Prize, the Under the Volcano Sandra Cisneros Fellowship, and is currently a member of the inaugural Periplus Fellowship cohort. Her novel The Volcano Daughters is forthcoming from Pantheon.

Selected Work:

The majestic Min Jin Lee chose my story “Álvaro,” for the 2017 Boston Review Aura Estrada Prize, and said some nice things about it: "Álvaro is the story we want to read because we have been missing it all along. In this moving and layered work of fiction, a romantic Salvadoran composer beguiles us with his charms but keeps us in his hold with his faith and love for the world. Balibrera has given us an unforgettable portrait of an ageless artist walking among us who will never leave us again." You can read “Álvaro” here.

I wrote a story about a weird esophagus and creeps for Pleiades, and the good people of Harlequin Creature made a beautiful broadside featuring the opening words and some art from Michelle Farro. Proceeds of the “Santísima” broadside go to RAICES. You can read “Santísima” here.

Meghan Forbes and Sherese Francis of Harlequin Creature also chose an excerpt from my novel The Volcano Daughters for their social justice subscription, which is “a series of chapbooks and pamphlets that reflect critically on social, political, and environmental issues.” It’s a very pretty object, and you can find it here. All proceeds of “Listen” go to RAICES.

And you can read another excerpt from my novel in The Wandering Song, the first literary anthology of Central American writers of the diaspora. Edited by Leticia Hernández Linares, Ruben Martinez, and Hector Tobar.

Representation:

Literary Agent: Stephanie Delman at Trellis Literary Management

UK Agent: Niki Chang at David Higham Associates

Film/TV: Hilary Zaitz Michael and Carolina Beltran at WME