UConn was proud to welcome narrator and podcast producer Daniel Alarcón to deliver this year’s Luis B. Eyzaguirre lecture on March 22^nd in the Student Union. Alarcón’s has risen to notoriety in recent years for his literary successes – including the novels Lost City Radio (Harper 2007) and At Night We Walk in Circles (Riverhead Books 2013) and short story collections War by Candlelight (HarperCollins 2005) and El rey siempre está por encima del pueblo (Sexto Piso 2009) – as well as his role in founding the popular Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante (2012). The talk dealt with the narrator’s philosophy on storytelling, according to which he views the act of journalistic and fictional narration as essentially the same. Alarcón spoke about the interrelation of his journalistic and narrative experience specifically in the case of his writings relating to prisons and prisoners, including pieces researched during visits to Riker’s Island in New York City and the infamous Lurigancho prison in Perú. The author read aloud from his novel At Night We Walk in Circles as well as his Harper’s Magazine article titled “All Politics is Local” (2012) to draw attention to the ways in which these two narrative projects bleed together. He then played for the audience an audio story that he had recently completed called “El Indio”, told in the voice of a long-time Mexican prison gang member-turned-PhD specialist in gang issues. Alarcón highlighted the impact of added audio production elements, including music and side effects, which serve to emphasize the comical tone of the speaker’s tale. He pointed out that what he liked best about this particular piece was that it “takes the aesthetics of well-done literature and combines them with journalism, and puts it in sound.” He summarized his talk as a retracing the steps of his journey as an artist, journalist, and storyteller, explaining that he considers himself above all as narrator, that is, a person who tells stories across all genres.

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