Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, Carolina Gómez-Montoya moves between various languages, disciplines and mediums. She currently teaches at Portland State University and in the Language & Thinking Program at Bard College. Carolina’s writing appears in Literal: Latin American Voices/Voces Latinoamericanas; ¡Basta! Mujeres colombianas contra la violencia de género (Bogotá: Debate escrito, 2015) and in Oregon Humanities magazine. Carolina holds an MA and PhD in Latin American and Peninsular Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park.
This February, Carolina will be leading the Delve Seminar, Enrique Vila-Matas: On Writing. Here is what she has to say about the seminar.
What interests/excites you about the author/texts your Delve is focused on?
The delve is a somewhat selfish opportunity to return to an author I discovered years ago. I was in search of an author for my dissertation and was interested in exploring the limits of writing. What I found was something of the proportions of a transatlantic vessel that required me to extend beyond the boundaries of my language and the literature I had read. Vila-Matas infuses with wit and imagination even the most suffocating and serious of philosophical problems. It seemed like a great reading for our times.
What can participants expect to happen in your Delve seminar?
I am not sure. A seminar like this has infinite possibilities, it can morph into a support group for those suffering of a writers’ block and for those who have a propensity to confuse fiction with reality. I think starting an avant-garde movement is never out of the question.
What do you think is the best way to have a good Delve experience in your seminar?
Bring your infinite wisdom and curiosity, as well as your eccentricities.
What do you like most about being a Delve guide? What are you looking forward to?
I am a beginner in the arena of delve seminarians and as such, I am in the most unusual position to enter accompanied by my fellow readers into uncharted territory. What do I look forward to? Reading accompanied.
What is keeping you going during the pandemic?
Walks –often without a route– with dear friends with whom I share a common sense of wonder and delight for the unexpected.
Favorite books? Writers? Music?
Books: Anaïs Nin & Witold Gombrowicz’s diaries.
Other writers: There are so many but these are a few writers I’ve read recently and learned to love: Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Luis Negrón and Wendy Guerra.
Music: Brittany Howard, Mercedes Sosa, la Rosalía.
