Only a Little While Here

María Ospina was born in Bogotá, Colombia. She’s a professor of Latin American culture at Wesleyan University. Her first book of fiction, the short story collection Azares del cuerpo, was published in Colombia, Chile, and Spain, and was translated into Italian and English (Variations on the Body). Her stories have appeared in Colombian anthologies and in literary magazines in the United States. She has also written extensively about contemporary Colombian culture in light of legacies of extractivism, violence, and war, including the book Memory’s Conundrum: Literature, Film, and Testimony at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Only a Little While Here, winner of the Colombian National Novel Award (2024) and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Literature (2023) is her first novel.Heather Cleary, a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, is a translator of poetry and prose from Spanish whose work has been recognized by the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, the National Book Foundation, English PEN, and the International Booker Prize, among others. The author of The Translator's Visibility: Scenes from Contemporary Latin American Fiction, she holds a PhD from Columbia University and is currently writing a novel about translation and betrayal.

"Animated by a sense of wonder about animals’ inner lives in a landscape increasingly altered by humans, Ospina’s narrative hints at the radical possibilities of a future shaped by purposeful communion with nature. This is revelatory."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Ospina tenderly yet compellingly tackles critical concepts of abandonment, displacement, transition, resiliency, and ultimately, connection in this subtle work of ecofiction."—Booklist “A book that broadens human sensibility.”—El País  “Ospina leads us to imagine the everyday lives of species whose survival depends on great wisdom and adaptability.”—Milenio  “Surprising and bold… A small and revelatory novel.”—Clarín  “A superb exercise in otherness.”—Fernanda Trías, author of Pink Slime  “Beautiful, rare, and poetic... It is impossible to resist the tenderness and sharpness of Ospina’s words.”—Mónica Ojeda, author of Jawbone