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Alejandro Varela

Alejandro Varela (he/him) is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in The Point Magazine, Boston Review, Harper's Magazine, The Rumpus, Joyland Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Offing, Blunderbuss Magazine, Pariahs (an anthology, SFA Press, 2016), the Southampton Review, The New Republic, and has received honorable mention from Glimmer Train Press.

He is a 2019 Jerome Fellow in Literature. He was a resident in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 2017–2018 Workspace program and a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Nonfiction. Alejandro was an associate editor at Apogee Journal from 2015 to 2020. His graduate studies were in public health.

His first book, The Town of Babylon, was out 3/22/2022 and was a finalist for the 73rd National Book Awards.

His second book is The People Who Report More Stress.

Genres: Literary Fiction

Novels

The Town of Babylon (2022)
Middle Spoon (2025)

Collections

The People Who Report More Stress (2023)

Award nominations

2022 National Book Award for Fiction (shortlist) : The Town of Babylon

Alejandro Varela recommends

Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You (2026)
Julián Delgado Lopera
"A thrilling ride, not only through the farmlands and cities of Colombia, but through time's imperfect vessel, life. . . . Julian Delgado Lopera has gifts to spare, and this classic novel is a present for us all."

The Outer Country (2026)
Davin Malasarn
"The Outer Country is a moving exploration of love's imperfect paths. Malasarn turns the immigrant's tale inside out. Yes, from struggle can come success, but this book lays bare the truth: the capitalist wormhole simply sucks. The acts of survival in this story rupture the lives of its characters, by stifling the human experience. Malasarn captures all of these tribulations with tremendous heart and beautiful prose. He is a writer to follow."

The Grand Paloma Resort (2025)
Cleyvis Natera
"The Grand Paloma Resort is a literary White Lotus. Through a rich cast of characters, Natera has written a sexy, sinister, and intricate tale that serves as an indictment of the haves at the expense of the have-nots."

When the Harvest Comes (2025)
Denne Michele Norris
"A tale of redemption and transformation in the face of great obstacles, When the Harvest Comes is a book for anyone who's ever believed they didn't deserve happiness, for anyone whose worldview has been shaped by marginalization, for anyone who's accomplished more than was expected of them. . . . Moving and uplifting."

Love Can't Feed You (2024)
Cherry Lou Sy
"A rollercoaster of emotions and an assault on the senses. Through the lives of one family, Sy has distilled the immigrant experience down to its most painful and traumatic moments, in the process writing an intelligent, wide ranging gut-punch of a debut. Queenie, the protagonist, is the very personification of instinct, curiosity, dislocation, and adaptation. This is a New York book that captures well what happens when life becomes about survival more than living."

Blackouts (2023)
Justin Torres
"Blackouts is a beautiful collage of a novel. Justin Torres quenches a thirst one scene, one flashback, one image at a time."

Candelaria (2023)
Melissa Lozada-Oliva
"Candelaria is a thrilling ride. Melissa Lozada-Oliva captures with deft humor the lives of a matriarch and her brood of daughters and granddaughters as they survive addiction, patriarchy, capitalism, natural disasters, and zombies. Reading Lozada-Oliva's work is like attending a family reunion, one where you hang in the backyard smoking a joint with your favorite cousin. Melissa is a smart, compassionate, and hilarious writer. I will read anything she writes."

The Apartment (2023)
Ana Menéndez
"Menendez writes from the gut, expertly crafting the tensions and bitterness of misplacement, the suffocation of place. She also writes from the spleen; Menendez's acerbic wit finds its way interstitially through the pages of this book, finding another gear for an already beautiful prose. The array of characters, all of whom have jumped out of a frying pan and into a fire, and specifically, into apartment 2B of the Helena, are escaping a past that won't let them be. They're immigrants and refugees whose hopelessness at times obfuscates their political realities: here isn't always better than there. At the center of this book, Menendez has constructed a home, a building, a city; she's also drawn a line - possibly a circle - that stretches from imperialism to mental health."

Austral (2023)
Carlos Fonseca
"The protagonists of this sweeping novel strive to piece together the past in all its cruelty to better understand themselves and whence they came. Austral juxtaposes beautifully the search for truth and the artistic process in a depiction that makes one indistinguishable from the other. With great sensitivity, Carlos Fonseca captures the sense of dislocation that comes to define anyone who has ever been displaced."

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