Carmen Boullosa (born in Mexico City in 1954) is one of Mexico’s leading novelists, poets and playwrights. The prolific author, who has had literally scores of books, essays and dissertations written about her work, has been lauded by critics on several continents. “Mexico’s best woman writer,” wrote Roberto Bolaño.
Half of her thirteen novels deal with historical themes - the world of Moctezuma, the early Colonial period in Mexico City, the life of pirates in the 17th Century Caribbean, the era of Cervantes, and the Renaissance - and some have been translated into Italian, Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and Russian. In Siruela she has published La otra mano de Lepanto (named by Reforma distinguished critic Sergio González Rodríguez as the Best Novel Published in Mexico in 2005.), El velázquez de París and La virgen y el violín.
Boullosa has also had a distinguished teaching career, and since 2004, she has been Distinguished Lecturer at City College, CUNY, in the Foreign Languages Department.