Daniel Alarcón


Daniel Alarcón is a Peruvian-American novelist, journalist and radio producer. He is co-founder, host and executive producer of Radio Ambulante, a Spanish language podcast distributed by NPR. Currently, he is an assistant professor of broadcast journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and writes about Latin America for The New Yorker.
He began his career writing fiction, publishing stories in magazines like The New Yorker, Granta, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere, and his short stories have been widely anthologized. He served as Associate Editor of the Peruvian magazine Etiqueta Negra until 2015. He is a former Fulbright Scholar to Peru, and a 2011 Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. His novel At Night We Walk in Circles was published by Riverhead Books in October 2013. His most recent story collection, The King is Always Above the People, was long-listed for the National Book Award in 2018, and won the 2019 Clarke Prize in Fiction. He received the MacArthur 'Genius Grant' in 2021.
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Biography

Alarcón, a native of Peru, was raised from the age of 3, in Birmingham, Alabama, and is an alumnus of Indian Springs School. As a high schooler, he attended the Telluride Association Summer Program. He earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Columbia University in 1999 and a master of fine arts degree in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2004. He has studied in Ghana and been a public school teacher in New York City. He was a high school classmate of novelist John Green.
His first book, War by Candlelight, was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, named a "Best Young American Novelist" by Granta magazine, and one of 39 under 39 Latin American Novelists. In 2010, he was also recognized by The New Yorker as one of 20 promising writers under 40.
Alarcón's debut novel, Lost City Radio, was published 2007, and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Turkish, and Japanese. The German translation of Lost City Radio by Friedericke Meltendorf received the International Literature Award from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. In 2009, he published a collection of short stories, El rey está siempre por encima del pueblo, and the following year, Ciudad de payasos, a graphic novel adapted from his 2003 story City of Clowns, with illustrations by Peruvian artist Sheila Alvarado.
In 2011, he co-founded Radio Ambulante with his wife Carolina Guerrero, along with Camila Segura, Martina Castro and Annie Correal.
In 2013, his second novel, At Night We Walk in Circles, was published to critical acclaim.
In 2021, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
In 2024, Alarcón hosted The Good Whale, a six-episode podcast from The New York Times and Serial Productions about the orca Keiko, who portrayed Willy in the 1993 film Free Willy.
Alarcón resides in New York City and teaches at Columbia University as an associate professor of journalism.

Novels

Lost City Radio

Short fiction

;CollectionsWar by Candlelight: Stories The King Is Always Above the People El Rey siempre está por encima del pueblo Editorial Sexto Piso, Mexico City, Mexico, 2009
;Anthologies Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue. A compilation of stories by Latin American writers. Co-edited with Diego Trelles Paz. Spring 2009
;Stories
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes
"City of Clowns"The New YorkerAdapted as a 2009 Peruvian short film

  • "Lima, Peru, July 28, 1979", Virginia Quarterly Review
  • "The King Is Always Above the People", Granta
  • "The Provincials", Granta
  • The Composer, ''Virginia Quarterly Review''

Graphic novels

City of Clowns. Illustrated by Sheila Alvarado. Riverhead Books. 2015. ISBN 978-1-59463-333-1.

Non-fiction

  • "What kind of Latino am I?". Salon. May 24, 2005.
  • "Let's go, country: The new Latin left comes to Peru". Harper's. September 2006.
  • "Lost in Translation". Granta. January 23, 2009.
  • "The Inauguration". Granta. January 27, 2009.
  • "Life Among the Pirates". Granta. Winter 2009.
  • "The Ground Floor". Granta. Autumn 2011.
  • "A Peruvian Soccer Fan in Exile". The New Yorker. November 13, 2017
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Awards