Valeria Luiselli on Sounding the Borderlands

This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the essay collection Thin Places. Thresholds is a co-production between Black Mountain Institute and Literary Hub

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For the final episode of Thresholds, Jordan sits down with Valeria Luiselli to talk about the U.S.-Mexico border, and in particular its origin point (or terminus) in the Pacific Ocean. They discuss Luiselli’s forays into sound art with her new project “Echos from the Borderlands”, her choice to set her next novel in Sicily, and the humor of whale song.

“Every time the tide would retreat, the dog would run toward the sea and in his anxiousness dig a hole between bollards of the border wall. It was an animal’s desperation with the wall. What would explain this animal’s desperation?”

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Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of the essays Tell Me How It Ends and Sidewalks; the sonic essay Echoes From the Borderlands; and the novels Faces in the Crowd, The Story of My Teeth, Lost Children Archive, and Beginning Middle End. She is the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship and the winner of DUBLIN Literary Award, two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, The Carnegie Medal, an American Book Award, and has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Booker Prize.

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For more Thresholds, visit us at thisisthresholds.com. Original music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud.