“I grew up on the strength of stories. I’ve encountered stories that have given language to my life and experiences. I’ve encountered literature that has wounded me, offended me, provoked me, entertained me, unmade me, reconstituted me. I love the range of what stories can do, so when I’m writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, I mainly think about truth-telling. If healing happens from my writing, either for myself or others, this is a byproduct of the truth-telling which is so often hard to do, and which I continually reach for.” — Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Colombia-born bestseller Ingrid Rojas Contreras is a thrilling talent whose prose brings her genre-bending stories to life. Her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds and novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree examine the complex narratives of family and ancestry, the worlds of women, history and colonialism, and marginalized cultures. Her latest work of nonfiction, Matriarchies, about the socio-political structures of cities of women both in life and in literature, will be published in 2027.

In The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Rojas Contreras “summons stories from the living and dead” (New York Times Book Review) as she reclaims her family’s otherworldly legacy and ancestral history. She brings readers into her childhood, where her grandfather, Nono, was a renowned medicine man gifted with “the secrets” or powers that included talking to the dead, fortunetelling, treating the sick, and moving the clouds. Her mother, with her ability to appear in two places at once and cast out spirits, was just as powerful. Rojas Contreras never felt she belonged to this story until she suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family told her that this had happened before: decades ago, her mother had also taken a fall that left her with amnesia. And when she recovered, she had gained access to “the secrets.”

Interweaving enchanting family lore, Colombian history, and her reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary. A finalist for both the 2022 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, The Man Who Moved Clouds was named a “Best Book of the Year” by Time, NPR, Vulture, People, Boston Globe, and Esquire, and was a winner of the California Book Award.

“In fierce and vivid prose, Ingrid Rojas Contreras explores the legacy of divination and traditional healing that both unites and divides her Colombian family. The result is a spellbinding mixture of memoir and history, filled with insights into culture and colonialism that raise fundamental questions about what is magical, what is real, and who gets to decide. The Man Who Moved Clouds is gorgeous, gripping, and wise; a book to be savored.” — National Book Award Judges Citation

Her bestselling debut novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, is set in Colombia at the height of Pablo Escobar’s violent reign. Inspired by her own coming of age in the political violence of the 1980s and 90s, Rojas Contreras tells the story of a sheltered young girl, Chula, and her family’s teenage maid, Petrona. Chula and Petrona strike a friendship, but as both girls’ families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, they become entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them to choose between sacrifice and betrayal. Hailed as “original, politically daring, and passionately written” by Vogue, Fruit of the Drunken Tree earned the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an Indie Next Pick, and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection.

“Make room on your shelves for a writer whose impressive debut promises many more.” — Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

In her talks to universities, libraries, and organizations, Rojas Contreras brings audiences into her writing process, unpacking storytelling’s role in migration, what is lost in translation when cultural and physical borders are crossed, and what is found within amnesia and the forgetting of self and country. She also explores the politics of power and the effects of generational trauma, diving into the lessons she has learned from the extraordinary women in her own family.

Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. She has received numerous awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, the Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Rojas Contreras is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College and lives in California. She is at work on a new novel.

For more information about Ingrid Rojas Contreras, please visit her on Instagram and at ingridrojascontreras.com.