Javier Fuentes

Biography

Javier Fuentes is a Spanish American writer. He is currently the Paris Review Visiting Professor of Literature at the Bard Prison Initiative. His debut novel, Countries of Origin (Pantheon, 2023), won the 2024 PEN Hemingway Award.

Javier Fuentes Headshot
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See Work

ON BECOMING / Spring 2025

A Language for Reinvention

By Javier Fuentes ,  Illustration by Landis Blair

The first time I escaped a language was in spring 1983. I was nine years old and living with my family in Barcelona, the city where I was born. My parents had just been informed that all my classes the following school year would be taught...

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