Meet GUSTAVO

GUSTAVO DE PAREDES was born in Mexico City, and throughout his literary career, he has won various competitions and scholarships. 

Thanks to the fact that he grew up in a family of reading parents, who gradually guided him in the knowledge of major literary works, from an early age he is a lover of literature. His first approach to the classics was through versions for children.

In his childhood home, Gustavo used to climb the eucalyptus trees that stood in the spacious garden and read those books that opened the door to unimagined spaces and times, and that caused him all kinds of emotions.

Over the years, he became acquainted with the original versions of these authors, and many others. This allowed him to create his own catalog of favorites. The 'Lost Generation' and the Latin American 'Boom', the 'Generation X' and the Mexican 'Crack', as well as narrators from different latitudes: Woolf, Caldwell, Highsmith, Roa Bastos, Tolkien, Ende, Saramago, Atwood, Auster, Ishiguro and Ogawa are among his favorites.

If there is something that he enjoys, it is reading a good book with background music. His mother, a self-taught who loved archeology and the history of ancient civilizations, brought him closer to the world of academic music. The father, on the other hand, cultivated his taste for jazz, big bands and the well-remembered ‘Rat Pack.’

DE PAREDES studied International Relations and worked for the Presidency of Mexico and the Ministry of Economy, in foreign press offices. Each trip he made to fulfill his duties allowed him to get to know a plurality of cultures and ways of thinking. For this reason, the world emerges as an object of interest in his literature.

He reaffirmed his passion for literature by studying a summer diploma-workshop at the Complutense University of Madrid, a diploma in Literary Creation, at the Ricardo Garibay School of Writers, and a Master’s Degree in Literature, at El Colegio de Morelos.

It is convenient to say that Morelos is a small entity in Mexico, located in the center-south of the country, in which the sunny climate dominates a good part of the year. More important, it is that artists of great international stature have lived there, from the composer and musical conductor Leonard Bernstein, to the jazz player Charles Mingus and the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

GUSTAVO DE PAREDES considers Literature as a “polygon” where the deepest ideas are expressed, accompanied by an imaginative component. “For those who think that literature is useless, we should remind them of the impact that authors such as Hugo, Kafka, Solzhenitsyn, Saramago or Easton Ellis had. Literature loses its aura of innocuousness by questioning the world. In that sense, it has a double function: to try to answer the big questions, and when this is not possible, to expand them; always with a reflective and critical purpose, which sometimes makes others feel awkward.”

A few years ago, he joined the academic staff of the Centro Morelense de las Artes, an institution specialized in training professionals in disciplines such as literary, dramaturgy, visual arts, music and dance. He teaches Literature, an activity that he loves and that can enrich because he speaks English, Italian and French.

GUSTAVO DE PAREDES has a particular affection for the United States, Canada and Spain, because some of his dearest relatives live in those countries. Finally, he usually writes in the company of his dogs and cats, whom he regards as part of his family and even thinks they inspire him. Perhaps it is true, because throughout his literary career he has managed to achieve some awards and a scholarship that allowed him to write two of his main works, a couple of short story anthologies: ‘A Day to End It All’ and ‘The Sun Reduced to Ashes.’ He has also been a lecturer and moderator at various book fairs in Mexico and formed a literary group known as ‘Clic’. 

I wrote A Day to End It All at the end of 2016, with more stories than this version contains. I eliminated the stories that did not satisfy me and concentrated on polishing the ones that I selected. Then I put them on pause since I was not quite sure of what to do with them. 

In  mid-2017, an opportunity arose for me to send the anthology to a contest in the state of Morelos, called by the Ministry of Culture. The  award for the winning work consisted of publication. My stories  triumphed and began their journey through the literary arena. 

Recently, the anthology took an even greater leap to be tested in the US market,  which represents a very interesting opportunity to capture readers with different cultural roots. 

For this reason, and for showing great sensitivity towards my work, I greatly appreciate the invitation that Brian Benson, founder of Dog Days Ink Publishing, in the state of  Virginia, made to me to publish this book. 

Each of the stories in the anthology is nourished with the little or much I know of the  literary world, but also with what I was able to learn while I worked at  the International Press offices of the Presidency of Mexico and the  Ministry of Commerce, between 1994 and 2008. 

I deeply thank my  former bosses Antonio Ocaranza, Salvador Musalem and Miguel Monterrubio,  as well as Socorro Córdova, from whose hand I got to know a portion of  the world, and my teachers and colleagues from the Ricardo Garibay  School of Writers, The College of Morelos and the Morelos Center of the  Arts, for providing me with the tools for interpreting it with literary  gaze. 

At the same time, I want to express my gratitude for the support I have received from the writers Andrea Ciria, 

Francisco  Rebolledo, Víctor Manuel Camposeco and Ana García Bergua, whose advice  and words of encouragement guided me to successfully finish this book.  

Finally,  I would like to honor with this book the path that somehow other  writers have amazed me with, regardless of their literary generations,  groups, latitudes, or times. Homero, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Cervantes,  Shakespeare, Kafka, Hugo, Poe, Dickens, Kipling, Woolf, Bashevis,  Tolkien, Hemingway, Bombal, Duras, Asimov, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa,  Ishiguro, Volpi, Vásquez, Cercas, Gamboa ..., thank you so much.