Laia Jufresa is a Mexican literary author based in Edinburgh, UK. She’s been named as one of the best authors of Latin America. She works in English and Spanish and has written for the BBC, Netflix, El País, McSweeney’s…
Bio:
Laia grew up in the cloud forest of Veracruz and spent her adolescence in Paris. In 2001, she moved to Mexico City and discovered she didn’t know how to cross a street. She’s been writing fiction ever since.
Laia's has been named as one of the most outstanding young writers in Latin America as part of the 2017 project Bogotá39 and from Mexico by México20.
Her work has been featured in several anthologies as well as magazines such as Letras Libres, Pen Atlas, Words Without Borders and McSweeney's. She has also written for newspapers (El País), radio (BBC) and television (Netflix).
She holds a BA from La Sorbonne University, and is the author of the short stories collection El esquinista (FETA, 2014) and the novel Umami (Literatura Random House, 2015).
Umami has been translated to English, French, French pocket book, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Danish. It was selected as the best first novel in Spanish at the 2016 First Novel Festival in Chambéry, France, it won a PEN Translates Award and was a finalist of The Best Translated Book Award 2017.
In 2014 Laia was invited to write chronicles for the crossing Border Festival in The Hague, and in 2015 she was invited by the British Council Literature to be the first ever International Writer in Residence at Hay Festival in Wales. In 2020 she was awarded a Literature Residency at Cove Park.
For its 30th anniversary the Hay festival selected “30 young novelists, scientists, philosophers, performers and activists who are astonishing and inspiring to join us in Hay". These writers and thinkers will help imagine and shape the world in the next 30 years”. Laia is honoured to be one of them.
Laia has received support from the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA, Mexico) and the Open Fund for Individuals from Creative Scotland.
During the pandemic, she wrote her first non-fiction book, Veinte, Veintiuno, which came out as an Audible Exclusive first, and was later on published by by Penguin Random House. The first chapter was translated to English by Rosalind Harvey and won second place in the Krause Prize awarded by the University of Iowa.
Laia is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she also works as a life coach for artists, writers and small business owners.
She is currently editing her second novel: WISHBONE.