Daína Chaviano (Author)

“In the U.S. it is believed that every Latin American writer who works with fantasy writes ‘magical realism’… it’s not a genre I even like,” she remarks over coffee as bookshelves and sunlight delicately frame her silhouette at Books & Books in the Gables. “I’m more in debt to W. B. Yeats than García Márquez.”

Currently hailed as the most prominent contemporary Cuban author of science fiction and fantasy, Daína Chaviano crafts sweeping tales that feel viscerally current and culturally relevant, especially to anyone born or raised in the tropics. From her Fábulas de una abuela extraterrestre (Fables from an Extraterrestrial Grandmother) to Historias de hadas para adultos (Fairy Tales for Grownups) and La isla de los amores infinitos (The Island of Eternal Love) to her latest novel, Los hijos de la Diosa Huracán (Children of the Hurricane Goddess), Chaviano’s work encompasses decades of masterfully wielding realistic, romantic and historical elements with the narrative and profoundly philosophical aspects of sci-fi, fantasy, and Gothic literatures, all crafted with her own Caribbean twist. (Complete text in PDF).