It’s very difficult to write about Argentina using only realism. In the 50s and 60s there was a strong tradition of fantastical fiction here: Borges,… - Mariana Enriquez

When I’m asked who I am, I say, “I am a Latin American.” The experience of being born and living in my country shaped me as a person — often a problematic one — and as a writer. I am a Latin American woman, which also implies a number of challenges: growing up without laws that allowed us to make decisions about our bodies (those laws exist now, but I am 50 years old) and fighting in a labor market that, in addition to being sexist, is scant and limited. Not only are jobs given to men because they are men, but because there is a lot of unemployment in general, and the chain breaks at its weakest link.

I think no one really chooses their tastes or their modes of expression: One day a language appears, and finding a language is a lot like finding a home. When I discovered horror cinema and literature, I found my language — the one that allowed me to talk about the terrors I have known. My language was formed by Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”; the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar and Stephen King; “Frankenstein”; “The Exorcist”; “Jaws” and “E.T.”; and later by “Twin Peaks”; rock and punk music; David Cronenberg; Clive Barker and fanzines.

to a large extent, this is the fear that I summon and depict, a feeling of simultaneous imminence and abandonment that is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it.