Fernanda Melchor (born 1982, Veracruz, Mexico) is a Mexican writer best known for her novel Hurricane Season for which she won the 2019 Anna Seghers Prize and a place on the shortlist for the 2020 International Booker Prize.
The writer has published literature including novels, chronicles, essays, cultural studies, and television story-writing. Falsa liebre (2013), Aquàno es Miami (2013), Hurricane Season (2017), and Páradais (2021) among many others which have been found in every part of Latin America, Europe, and the United States and have been translated into several languages. Melchor has been awarded several prestigious prizes, including the Anna Seghers Prize, the Berlin International Literature Award, and the Ryszard Kapuà Âcià Âski Award. She has also been a finalist for the International Booker Prize and appeared on The New York Times' lists of the best books of the century.
Fernanda Melchor was born in the municipality of Boca del RÃÂo, in Veracruz.
Melchor graduated with a degree in Journalism from the Universidad Veracruzana where she was Coordinator of Communication of the Veracruz-Del RÃÂo campus.
Melchor has published fiction and nonfiction in The Paris Review, La Palabra y el Hombre, Letras Libres, Excélsior, Replicante, Milenio semanal, Le Monde diplomatique, Vice Latinoamérica, GQ Latinoamérica and Vanity Fair Latinoamerica. She began her writing career in 2013 with the publication of Aquàno es Miami (2013), a collection of literary journalism, and Falsa Liebre (2013), her first novel.
Hurricane Season âÂÂa novel based on the murder of a witch in a small town in Melchor's home state, VeracruzâÂÂwas featured as one of the best novels in Mexico in 2017 The book has been translated into German by Angelica Ammar and into English by Sophie Hughes. It won the 2020 International Literature Award of the Haus der Kulturen in Germany, and was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize.
In 2015, Melchor was included in a Conaculta's anthology as one of the featured Mexican authors under 40 years old.
In 2018, Melchor won the PEN Mexico Award for Literary and Journalistic Excellence.
In 2019, Melchor was awarded the International Literature Award as well as the Anna Seghers-Preis along with the German writer Joshua Gross.
Melchor's 2021 book, Paradais, translated by Sophie Hughes, was shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prize.
In September 2023 the English translation of AquÃÂ no es Miami (This is Not Miami) was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.
In 2024, she received the Ryszard Kapuà Âcià Âski Award, an international literary prize in the genre of literary reportage, for her book Aquàno es Miami (This is Not Miami).