INTRODUCING: ANDREA CIRIA

     Andrea Ciria was born in Mexico City in 1979. She is a writer, proofreader, and translator. She studied for her master’s degree in Literature at El Colegio de Morelos, a degree in Communication Sciences and a minor in Music at the Universidad de las Americas (UDLA) and a diploma in Literary Creation at the Escuela de Escritores Ricardo Garibay. She has published over 50 fantastic short stories in different literary magazines and anthologies, a fantastic novel and a psychological thriller. 

     In 2020 her fantastic story “La pirueta en el bucle” (The pirouette in the loop) was selected for publication in the Third Anthology of Mexican Writers; in 2019 she obtained the first place in the XXII National Short Story Contest "Mujeres en vida", a tribute to María Luisa Bombal, with the fantastic story "La otra ley" (Another type of law), and that same year she received an honorable mention for the anthology of fantastic stories Mala leche (Bad blood), in the Call for Unpublished Work of the Editorial Fund of the State of Morelos. In 2017 she obtained the first place in the First Call for Publication of Unpublished Work of Lengua de Diablo Editorial, with the compilation of fantastic stories Conjeturas imposibles (Impossible assumptions), and in 2015 she received an honorable mention for the fantastic story "Su único ojo" (Her only eye), in the First National Prize of Fantastic Tales “Amparo Dávila”.

     Intrigue, ambiguity, and suspense have always been her favorite literary elements, and they have inspired her to write. Among her favorite authors are Charlotte Perkins, María Luisa Bombal, Felisberto Hernández, Silvina Ocampo, Margaret Oliphant, Charles Dickens, Juan José Arreola, Julio Cortázar, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Mario Levrero, E.T.A. Hoffmann, who have led her to the delight of guessing between the possible and the improbable.  

     Andrea Ciria believes that fantastic literature can make us speculate, doubt, imagine other possibilities, such as a long corridor crowded with doors, ajar or open, through which it is possible to spy to understand the world from alternate perspectives. From a very young age, she asked her parents to tell her, over and over again, the mysteries that coexist among us such as parallel worlds, ghosts, life on other planets, time travel, ships and planes that disappear without leaving a paw print. Upon listening to these enigmas, she dreamed up all kinds of hypotheses, in which she constantly imagined herself trapped. When she writes, she strives to conceive stories with which readers can make their own assumptions about them, provoking their attraction towards the impossible while skimming their fears.

     The enveloping of her own fears about the possibility of other worlds can always be found in her literature. Fantastic literature has given her the tools to explore all kind of themes through mental labyrinths that twist until the very last possibility.