Mexican author Antonio Ortuño Sahagún said the road to being published in Mexico is long and filled with obstacles, highlighting how little access most writers have to publishers even when they produce high-quality work.
The remarks were made during the presentation of his latest short story collection “The Vague Ambition” at the Third State of Mexico Book Fair. Today’s publishers “are particularly rough with younger writers; there’s no faith in their work, which results in them having no readers,” he said.
Ortuño Sahagún also pointed out the prevalence of non-literary figures such as columnists, influencers and social media personalities “who pretend to market themselves as writers even when they lack a solid body of work.”
A former columnist and news editor, Ortuño Sahagún commented on how fiction has helped him break away from journalism and on how at times he uses it to mock the tropes of journalistic writing.
Ortuño Sahagún is a novelist, essayist and short story writer. He is known mostly for his novels “The Head Hunter” and “Human Resources,” as well as for the short story collections “The Japanese Garden” and “Mrs. Red.”
