Chilean · b. 1977
María José Ferrada writes for children and adults, blurring the line between them. The Chilean author's "How to Order the Universe" (2021) follows a seven-year-old girl accompanying her father on his rounds as a traveling salesman in Pinochet-era Chile; the political horror stays at the edges while the child's wonder fills the frame. Ferrada's prose is spare and strange, finding the cosmic in the domestic.