Novelist Alejandro Varela — fiction reading
Date/Time
Location
Williams College (880 Main St., Williamstown, MA 01267, Williamstown MA)
Coming to creative writing by way of a fully-realized career in public health, National Book Award Finalist Alejandro Varela is a distinctive and urgently needed literary voice–both a conjurer of imaginative, incisive, and often humorous fiction.
He is also a public health storyteller and a former cancer researcher. Driven by concerns fundamental to public health, Varela’s fiction engages readers with stories constructed around pressing social issues ranging from systemic racism to gentrification, to income inequality and class conflict, to sexuality and heterosexism.
His work has appeared in the Boston, Yale, and Georgia Reviews, The Point Magazine, Harper’s, and The Offing, among other publications. His debut novel, The Town of Babylon (Astra House, 2022) was a finalist for the National Book Award.
His short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress (Astra, 2023), was a finalist for the International Latino Book Awards, and longlisted for the Aspen Literary Prize, the Story Prize, and the Jean Stein Awards.
Middle Spoon, his forthcoming novel, will be published by Viking (September 2025). Varela is an editor-at-large of Apogee Journal, and he holds a masters in public health from the University of Washington.