Faculty Reflections: Daniel Alarcón | Office of the Provost

Daniel Alarcón, Assistant Professor of Journalism and 2021 MacArthur Fellow, recently spoke with Jennifer Leach, Associate Director for Faculty Advancement, about his early influences and his path to becoming a creative writer, journalist, and professor. I read that you were born in Peru and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm really curious how your upbringing influenced your decision to pursue writing and eventually journalism. That's a really good question, and I think the juxtaposition of the two places was pretty intense. My family and I were lucky enough to be able to go back and forth a fair amount. Not every year, but every other year during my childhood until about 1990. At that point, the situation in Peru was very dangerous and my parents would go, but we would stay behind. So as a kid, I grew up in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, a kind of pretty typical American suburban experience. And then flying to Lima, which was this chaotic megacity in the middle of a war and a dete

Daniel Alarcón, Assistant Professor of Journalism and 2021 MacArthur Fellow, recently spoke with Jennifer Leach, Associate Director for Faculty Advancement, about his early influences and his path to becoming a creative writer, journalist, and professor. I read that you were born in Peru and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm really curious how your upbringing influenced your decision to pursue writing and eventually journalism. That's a really good question, and I think the juxtaposition of the two places was pretty intense. My family and I were lucky enough to be able to go back and forth a