Colombian journalist Juan Miguel Álvarez –two-time winner of the Simón Bolívar Award for Journalism– received the III Sergio González Rodríguez Chronicle Anagram Award for his unpublished book the war we lost. This year has been very eventful for Álvarez: in January he lost his father, fellow journalist Miguel Álvarez, and received the bombshell news of being the winner of a laurel that opens up the readership market in Latin America. A few months later, the Rey Naranjo publishing house gave the public place of transita volume in which Álvarez offers an anthology of his work and complements it with reflections on the craft of literary journalism.
What was your reaction to receiving the Anagrama award, which endorses your journalistic career?
“It was very exciting. I was notified on Friday, January 14, at noon. That call was exactly one week following my dad died: he died on Friday the 7th at 12:20 p.m. And they called me regarding the award on Friday the fourteenth at 12:30 p.m. I wanted to give him something of mystical value. So it was very exciting. At that time I might not believe the situation. Silvia, the general editor of Anagrama, called me, and she spoke on the other side of the line, and I answered her, and she was laughing there, ingratiating herself with me, and I here, covered in tears. So it was very surprising. The feeling has been one of great expectation”.
The award opens the doors to an important Latin American public…
“And of course, that is one of the challenges. And that is the great possibility that opens with this, that the book will be published by the publisher for the Spanish-speaking world. And that, let’s say, poses a huge challenge for me, in some way it makes me think of my work under a different logic, because it is no longer writing for readers who know very well everything that happens in Colombia – most people who read me are people who know very well what is happening in the country–, but it is starting to write for people who have no idea what is happening in Colombia and who have a distant relationship with Colombian internal affairs. The question is, ready, I’m going to write or I’m going to start being published for a Spanish-speaking public. But, what am I going to tell?, what am I going to say?, how to change the look, make it more universal if you want, make it more complex? So there comes the scenario that I have to face now.”
Let’s talk now regarding his most recent book, transit place. From the exercise of a journalist who decides to think regarding the job.
“For me, chronicle writing has always been an exercise in intimate expression. I have never considered the chronicle to be a purely public exercise, a kind of skill. In that sense, literary journalism, let’s say, allows one to explore oneself. Explore. And that’s an exploration of who I am and why I’m writing this. The annotations interspersed with the chronicles are from the same moment in which they happened. In other words, I have these annotations since those years, the majority, 80%. Others I did while I was finishing the book because they reflected more recent times.
AND Those questions were essentially the ones I was asking myself at the time. And the questions, let’s say, were: I am a writer of chronicles, but why do I choose these topics? Why am I involved in these topics? Why am I not more carefree, why am I not, let’s say, an author of more relaxed topics, why do I have to take myself to that extreme? And I haven’t been able to fully answer those questions. That’s what the book is regarding: trying to take the questions to a different place, not solving them.
There is also an exercise of thinking regarding your career as a freelancer, what can we reflect on the economy and survival of a journalist who is dedicated to non-fiction?
“The life of a freelancer is like this: they can pay you a million in a moment and for one to receive another check it will take a year or more, many months and one has to learn to distribute that million in a lot of months. And one has to get used to being very orderly with money, with expenses and learn to find complementary ways of working. I became very expert in a lot of activities that if it had not been for this career I would never have done them. So, that allows one to live, complete for the expenses of the month. You also have to cut costs. From the beginning I was very willing to do it. Many people ask me how I have managed to live as a freelancer. And I tell him that aspiring to earn very little monthly money. And if you stop to think regarding that, then you can do it. And what does it mean to earn little monthly money? That you spend very little, but you also know that for a long time you have to live, let’s say, on a very modest rent or in the room of your mother’s house.
So one begins to accept certain behaviors that, if one had well-paying jobs, one would not have to endure. But I put up with it to the extent that it was a path to freedom of writing. All this and find themes. I put up with some not-so-comfortable things, like having to be supported by my father, even though I was already a lot of years old, having to be supported by other people, by friends. So one has to learn that life is for very little money and brings a lot of problems, but the great gain is that one gains time and freedom to write. And that was very clear to me.”