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🇲🇽 Mexico /Culture & Society

Writer and editor Alejandro Arteaga wins the 2025 Xavier Villaurrutia Prize

From El Universal · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Outcome reported
  • Mexican writer, essayist and editor Alejandro Arteaga won the 2025 Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for his book “Sala de máquinas.”
  • The jury praised the work’s exploration of technology, humanity and literary creation through 21 hybrid fictional pieces.
  • Arteaga called inclusion among the prize’s distinguished past winners a privilege.

Alejandro Arteaga has won Mexico’s 2025 Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for “Sala de máquinas,” a work the jury described as poetic fiction about the relationship between technology, humanity and literary creation.

a sample of poetic fiction

· Xavier Villaurrutia Prize juryThe jury’s description of Arteaga’s winning book.

The book brings together 21 fictional pieces centered on fantastic, absurd or far-fetched machines and technologies. Its forms range from letters and reports to newspaper articles, essays, speeches and sales sheets. Among its inventions are an electronic magnifying glass that solves crimes and mysteries, a 19th-century aerostatic vessel for landscape artists, a robot bard that wins a poetry contest, a treadmill that aids discernment and an automated city in the Amazon.

a fictional machine that, in its hybrid character, shows an ability to overcome the distances between genres through a continuous exercise of assembly and transformation

· Xavier Villaurrutia Prize juryThe jury explained how the book combines literary forms.

The jury, made up of Liliana Weinberg, Mónica Nepote and Hugo Valdés, awarded the prize by majority vote. It called the book “a sample of poetic fiction” that opens the possibility of treating literature as a game between determinism and freedom, technology and humanity, and automatism and creation. The judges also described it as “a fictional machine” whose hybrid character crosses genre boundaries through constant assembly and transformation.

a book to go and live in

· Xavier Villaurrutia Prize juryThe jury highlighted the book’s relationship between literature and life.

“Sala de máquinas” examines the conflicts that emerge when technology replaces people in tasks such as artistic creation. It also addresses identity, the increasingly blurred boundary between reality and fiction, and the exploration of the subconscious. Arteaga said the prize’s prestige comes from the books and authors who have received it, and called joining that tradition “a privilege.” He studied Hispanic Language and Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and held a fellowship from the Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas from 2006 to 2008.

Including one’s own work in that universe is a privilege

· Alejandro ArteagaArteaga responded to the award by referring to the prize’s notable past winners.
About this summary

Originally published by El Universal in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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