Liliana Colanzi, associate professor of Romance studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has received the 2025 Zinklar Award from the Danish Writers Association. The honor recognizes outstanding short-story authors. Dr. Colanzi’s win marks the first time the Zinklar Award has recognized Spanish language fiction.
A native of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Dr. Colanzi is well-known for her speculative fiction. She is the author of three short-story collections, most recently Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro (Editorial Páginas de Espuma, 2022). In 2022, the book received the Ribera del Duero prize, which honors the best short stories in Latin America and Spain and includes a $25,000 prize. The award-winning collection was later translated into English and published as You Glow in the Dark (New Directions, 2024).
At Cornell, Dr. Colanzi teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses on Brazilian literature, Latin American horror, posthumanism, animal studies, and creative writing in Spanish. Her scholarship focuses on literatures of irreality in modern and contemporary Latin American fiction and its relationship to issues of class, gender, and race, as well as to debates on animal studies and posthumanism.
Dr. Colanzi received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell University.