Writers from Quito - Ecuadorian Literature

Fernando Tinajero

Fernando Tinajero Villamar (Quito, January 5, 1940) is an Ecuadorian novelist, essayist, and university professor. In the 1960s he was one of the most active members of Tzantzismo a cultural vanguard movement which had roots in the Cuban revolution. In 1971 he earned a PhD in philosophy from Charles University (Univerzita Karlova) in Prague. He is best known for his essay writing and his novel El desencuentro (1976). He was the 2015 recipient of the Eugenio Espejo Prize in literature awarded by the Ecuadorian president.

Alfonso Reece Dousdebés

Alfonso Reece Dousdebés (Cotocollao, 1955) is an Ecuadorian journalist, TV reporter, and novelist. He studied law and sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador. He worked as a reporter since 1980 for the television channels Ecuavisa and Teleamazonas. In 1990 he decided to become a print journalist and has since worked for many leading journals of Ecuador, among which are 15 Días, Vistazo, SoHo, Mango and Mundo Diners. An article in the latter magazine earned him the Jorge Mantilla Ortega Prize from El Comercio in 1998. He is currently a columnist for the newspaper El Universo. His novels include “El Numerario” (1996), “Morga” (2007), and “Todas las aves” (2013). Critic Antonio Sacoto has acclaimed “Todas las aves” as the best-written Ecuadorian novel of the 21st century.

César E. Arroyo

César E. Arroyo (Quito, 1887 – Cádiz, 1937) was an Ecuadorian poet, novelist, journalist, playwright and diplomat. He was Ecuador’s Consul in Vigo from 1912 to 1916, and Ecuador’s Consul in Madrid from 1917 to 1919. He later served as Consul in Santander and Cadiz. He co-founded the Madrid-based magazine Cervantes (1913-1921) with the Spanish poet Francisco Villaespesa.

Ney Yépez Cortés

Ney Yépez Cortés (Quito, 1968) is an Ecuadorian novelist, poet, journalist, songwriter, screenwriter, lecturer, and teacher of Tai Chi, Reiki and Qi Gong. He is best known as a science fiction, adventure and mystery writer. He published his first poems in 1990 in Ixo Facto, a surrealist literary magazine. He has since written 5 novels and 3 books of short stories. In 2001 he published his first book of short stories entitled “Mundos abiertos,” which was critically acclaimed. In 2006 he published his first novel “Las sombras de la Casa Mitre,” and 2009 he published its sequel “El árbol de las brujas.” His latest novel “El secreto de la reliquia sagrada,” a work of adventure and mystery, was published in 2019.

Javier Vásconez

Javier Vásconez (Quito, 1966) is an Ecuadorian novelist, short story writer, and editor. In 1989, his collection of short tales “El hombre de la mirada oblicua” [The Man with the Sideways Glance] won the Joaquín Gallegos Lara Prize, and in 1982 his book of short stories “Ciudad lejana” [A Distant City] was a finalist for the Casa de las Américas Prize (Cuba). His stories have been translated into other languages, including English, French, German, Swiss, Hebrew, Bulgarian, and Greek. In 2022, he was awarded the Eugenio Espejo Prize, which is Ecuador’s highest national literary award.

Juan Andrade Heymann

Juan Andrade Heymann (Quito, December 18, 1945) is an Ecuadorian writer, novelist, short story writer, poet, and playwright. His short story El lagarto en la mano (1965) and his novel Las tertulias de San Li Tun (1993) expressed social change.

Aleyda Quevedo Rojas

Aleyda Quevedo Rojas (Quito, 1972) is an Ecuadorian poet and journalist. She is regarded as an important voice in contemporary Latin American poetry. Among her best-known works are the poems “Algunas rosas verdes” (1996), for which she won that year’s Jorge Carrera Andrade Award, and “Soy mi cuerpo” (2006), in which she uses the human figure as an escape from the fears and anguish provoked by death. The latter book and another one, “Jardín de dagas” (2013), were translated into French. In 2017, the House of Ecuadorian Culture published the book “Cierta manera de la luz sobre el cuerpo,” a compilation of her poems up to that point.

Hipatia Cárdenas de Bustamante

Hipatia Cárdenas de Bustamante, also known as Aspacia (Quito, March 23, 1889 – Quito, February 9, 1972) was an Ecuadorian writer, politician, suffragist, and feminist. She was one of the pioneering defenders of women’s suffrage in Ecuador. In 1929, she became the first female Councilor of State, and in 1932, she became the first female candidate for the presidency. She fought for respect in the women’s right to vote in Ecuador after its approval in 1929 and the appearance of groups that were against it. In 1943 she published her book “Oro, rojo y azul,” and wrote for the newspapers El Día, El Comercio, and the magazine América.

Dolores Veintimilla

Dolores Veintimilla de Galindo (Quito, 1829 – Cuenca, May 23, 1857) was an Ecuadorian poet. Veintemilla left few works, which were published posthumously in a collection entitled, “Producciones literarias,” by Celiano Monge in Quito. Her best known poem is “Quejas” (Laments). Her literary style is characterized by rhythmic and musical verse, and she hardly made use of metaphors or imagery in her poetry. She committed suicide on May 23, 1857 in Cuenca.

Manuela de la Santa Cruz y Espejo

Manuela de la Santa Cruz y Espejo, also known by her pseudonym Erophilia in her articles (Quito, December 20, 1753 – Quito, 1829) was an Ecuadorian journalist, nurse, feminist, and revolutionary. She was the sister of Eugenio Espejo, with whom she discussed and shared Enlightenment and revolutionary, pro-revolutionary thought and ideas.

Edna Iturralde

Edna Iturralde De Howitt (Quito, May 10, 1948) is Ecuador’s most important and prolific authors of children and young adult’s literature. She has written 62 books. She has won various prizes and nominations within and outside her country. Among the most important of these are the Dario Guevara Mavorga National Prize for Children’s Literature in Ecuador in 2001, the Skipping Stones Award in the United States in 2002 and 2005, and the Mention of Honor of the Municipality of Quito in 2003 and 2004. She has been nominated twice, in 2012 and 2013, for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA). Her work was selected by the SEP within the competition of the Mexican Ministry of Education in 2003 and 2005. In 2005, two of her books were nominated for the Ecuadorian Honor List of IBBY (International Board of Books for the Young). She was a 2014 International Latino Book Awards Finalist. She is the president of the Ecuadorian Academy of Children and Juvenile Literature, which is associated with the Latin American Academy of Children and Juvenile Literature. Several of her books has been translated into English.

Edwin Alcarás

Edwin Marcelo Alcarás Panchi (Quito, 1981) is an Ecuadorian professor, cultural journalist and fiction writer. He is the author of the book of short stories La tierra prometida (2012), which in 2010 won third place in the First Literary Prize of the Provincial Council of Pichincha. In 2011, he decided to quit writing for newspapers, and started an academic career. He has completed three Master’s Degree programs. 1. Hispanic Philology (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED, Madrid, 2013); 2. Latin American Literature (PUCE, 2016), and Philosophy and Social Thought (FLACSO, 2019). He is currently a professor of Spanish as a foreign language at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE), and as a visiting assistant professor he has taught Spanish as a Second Language, Latin American Literature, and Creative Writing at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.

Alejandro Moreano

Alejandro Moreano (Quito, 1945) is an Ecuadorian writer, essayist, university professor, novelist, literary critic, and political scientist. On four occasions he was the director of the school of sociology at the Central University of Ecuador, and has been a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, and is currently a visiting professor at the Simon Bolivar Andean University (Ecuador). His latest novel El crímen del tarot (2020), which Moreano has described as “a novel within a novel,” has to do with politics, theater, love and eroticism.

Jaime Marchán

Jaime Marchán Romero (Quito, March 15, 1947) is an Ecuadorian writer and politician. In 2013 his novel “Volcán de Niebla” won the Joaquín Gallegos Lara Prize. He studied Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University (Quito), and earned a PhD at George Washington University (Washington, D.C.). He has served as Ecuador’s ambassador to Yugoslavia (1989-1990), Italy (1990-1992), Austria (1994-1997), Chile (1997-2000), Switzerland (2003-2008), and the United Kingdom (2019-). He has also held various posts in Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Patricio Vallejo Aristizábal

Patricio Vallejo Aristizábal (Quito, 1964) is an Ecuadorian actor, director, dramaturg, playwright, and professor. In 2013, his play Caminando sobre arenas movedizas (2012) won the Joaquín Gallegos Lara Prize. He has written books on theater, such as Teatro y vida cotidiana (2003), El teatro político y la figura del Inca (2003), and La Niebla Y La Montaña: Tratado Sobre El Teatro Ecuatoriano Desde Sus Orígenes (2011). In 2001, the House of Ecuadorian Culture bestowed on Vallejo the “National Theatrical Merit Award.”