“Silvia Moreno-Garcia on the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, Occultism, and the Pitfalls of Ethnocentrism” - shondaland
Published: Jul 24, 2023The prolific author discusses her newest release, "Silver Nitrate."
After Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic became a massive hit, eventually landing on the New York Times best-seller list in 2020, you might think she would rest easy for a while. But this was not the case. “You don’t get just one book that does well, and then you can sit back and never do anything ever again,” she says. “Unless I guess it’s like To Kill a Mockingbird or something like that. But I don’t want to write just one book.” So, she stayed at her full-time job, using vacations and weekends to attend literary events and interviews while squeezing in writing time and publishing a book a year since 2015. And on the heels of the critically acclaimed and commercially popular Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia was able to quit her job this year and focus entirely on her writing.
Moreno-Garcia grew up in Baja California with parents who worked in radio, and she moved to Canada in her early 20s with her husband, where she earned a master’s in science and technology studies from the University of British Columbia. She stayed in Vancouver to work for the school in communications for the faculty of science, writing on the bus or during lunch breaks. With her latest release, this month’s Silver Nitrate, Moreno-Garcia, 42, has published nine novels, a nonfiction book about how to write speculative fiction, three short story collections, three chapbooks, and dozens of individual short stories. She also has a micropress that releases the occasional short story anthology or novella, and she edits various literary magazine issues.
Silver Nitrate follows discontented childhood best friends Montserrat and Tristán as they near their 40s in 1990s Mexico City. Montserrat, an inveterate horror fan and film buff, is an analog sound editor who’s getting pushed out of her job thanks to sexism and technological advancement. Tristán, once a soap opera star on the rise, has struggled to string together acting gigs after a tragic car crash left his girlfriend dead and his reputation in tatters. Their friendship is also rocky, since they both know Montserrat is a little in love with Tristán, and he only calls her in between girlfriends.
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