Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor Héctor Abad will present his most recent novel, The Farm, and in appear in conversation with writer and professor Juan Martinez at the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion.

Héctor Abad is one of Colombia’s leading writers. Born in 1958, he grew up in Medellín, where he studied medicine, philosophy and journalism. In 1987, his father was murdered by Colombian paramilitaries, an event he reflected on 20 years later in Oblivion: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), which earned widespread critical acclaim as well as the WOLA-Duke Book Award. Abad writes a weekly column for Colombia’s national newspaper El Espectador. The Farm won the 2015 Cálamo Prize in Spain and was shortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Prize.

Juan Martinez is a fiction writer, and Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern University. He was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia. Martinez’s work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, and more. Best Worst American, his story collection, was released by Small Beer Press in February 2017.