Ciudad de México, 1984
Novelist, essayist, poet, and translator. His latest book is The Dance and the Fire (Finalist for the 39th Herralde Novel Prize; forthcoming by Catapult, 2025). He is the author of the poetry collections That Pure Matter (Winner of the Jaime Reyes Award 2007) and The Autobiographical Machine (2012 & 2019), as well as the novels Among Strange Victims (2016) and Ramifications (2020), both translated into several languages. His collection of personal essays Planes Flying Over a Monster (Catapult) is a most anticipated book for the summer of 2024 and was described as "destined for canonical status" by Chloé Cooper Jones.
He has received fellowships from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (Young Creators Program, 2006-2007 and 2016-2017), the Foundation for Mexican Letters (2007-2008 and 2008-2009), and the FONCA-Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec Artistic Residencies Program (Montreal, Canada, 2012). He has been a resident writer at the Union des Écrivaines et des Écrivains Québécois (Quebec), MacDowell (USA), Writers Omi (USA), The Banff Centre (Canada), and the Writer's Residence at the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), Argentina.
He curated and introduced the anthologies Twelve Sharp: New Chilean Poetry (1971-1982) (2012) and A New Mode: New Mexican Fiction (2012). His poetry has been anthologized in Divine Treasure: A Showcase of New Mexican Poetry (2008) Best of New Mexican Writing (2008) and A Golden Age: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (2012). His fiction was included in Voces -30 Latinoamérica (2014) Mexico20: New Voices, Old Traditions (Pushkin Press, 2015), Bogota39: New Voices from Latin America (OneWorld, 2018) and The Infraordinary: Narratives around Georges Perec and the search for everyday life (2018), among others.
He authored the multidisciplinary project Universal Method of Derived Poetry, showcased in the Sixth Public Art Forum at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (2009) and the Internacional FILBA Festival in Buenos Aires (2019). He was also a part of the group show Every Original Will Be Destroyed, at House of Gaga Gallery (Mexico City) in 2014.
As a translator, he works with art texts for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) in Mexico City and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He co-translated Valeria Luiselli's novel Lost Children Archive (Desierto sonoro). Other contemporary authors he has translated include Bryan Washington and Francisco Goldman.
His work has appeared in magazines and newspapers like El País (Spain), The Guardian (UK), BOMB (USA), Guernica (USA), Aperture (USA), Esquire (Mexico), Letras Libres, Revista de la Universidad de México, Gatopardo (Mexico), L’Inconvénient (Québec), El Malpensante (Colombia), Crisis (Argentina), Casapaís (Uruguay) and Eterna Cadencia (Argentina), among others.
In 2017, he was named one of the best Latin American writers under 40 by the Hay Festival’s Bogotá39 list. In 2020, he won the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writers Award, granted by the British Library and the Hay Festival in the UK.
Fue becario del Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the NYPL in 2022-2023. He is internationally represented by Casanovas & Lynch, from Barcelona.
En la prensa:
«For all this not to be an exercise in self-pity or another display of auto-fictional exhibitionism , a solid literary armor is needed. And Saldaña has it. —Babelia
«Free of sentimentality, inhabited by an intelligence of human relationships and by a simplicity in the enunciation of truth.» —Libération
—NPR
«An unforgettable reading.»
—Le Journal du Dimanche
«The Mexican Philip Roth.» —Ottessa Moshfegh (Vulture)
«Intriguing and recommendable novel that counts among its assets a wise handling of suspense and rhythm.» —El Mundo
«Saldaña París recovers the true meaning of the literary work.»
—La Jornada
"One of the most interesting writers on the Latin American scene."
—La Stampa
«[Planes Flying Over a Monster is] a beautiful book, at times terrible and always poetic.»
—El Cultural
«A welcome infusion of vitality into North American literature».
—Bookslut
"Some of the best literature being done on the other side of the pond."
—ABC
"An intelligent gaze, in continual distrust of its own experience." —Letras Libres
