Part 1: Lecture – Latin American Haiku

Cristina Rascón will explore the early development of haiku in the Spanish language, focusing on the period between 1919 and 1940. She will analyze works of José Juan Tablada (Mexico), Flavio Herrera (Guatemala), and José Carrera Andrade (Ecuador), examining their distinct approaches to haiku and comparing them to the Japanese haiku tradition, which dates back to the 17th century and continues to thrive today.

Part 2: Poetry Reading – Reflejos by Cristina Rascón

Following the lecture, Rascón will present a selection of her own haiku from her book Reflejos (Reflections).

Cristina Rascón (México, 1976) is a Mexican writer and literary translator. Her body of work includes both fiction and poetry, with notable titles such as La desilusión óptima del amor (The Optimal Disappointment of Love), En voz alta (Out Loud), Hanami, and the haiku collections Reflejos (Reflections) and Zoológico de palabritas (Little Words' Zoo), among others. Her book En voz alta has been translated into German under the title Mit lauter Stimme (Pen Austria & Löcker Verlag).

Rascón has translated a wide range of Japanese authors into Spanish, including:

• Fukushima y otros poemas (Fukushima and Other Poems) by Tawada Yōko,
• Flor del alba (Sunrise Flower), a haiku selection by Chiyo-ni,
• Sin conocer el mundo (Without Knowing the World) and Dos mil millones años luz de soledad (Two Billion Light Years of Solitude) by Tanikawa Shuntarō,
• and Agend'Ars by Suga Keijirō.

She has been an invited speaker at several international conferences, including:

• the Latin American Association of Asian and African Studies (ALADAA) in Costa Rica (2023) with the lecture “Translating Japanese Haiku into Spanish”,
• the Haiku Seabeck Conference (USA, 2022) with “Hispanic-American Haiku and Haiku in Mexican Indigenous Languages”,
• the Seminar on Japanese Literature and Gender at UNAM (Mexico, 2020) with “Women Poets in Haiku: Translating Chiyo-ni”,
• and the International Congress "Literature Japan Interface" at the University of Vienna (2015) with “The Influence of Japan on Mexican Literature”, among others.

Cristina Rascón has been awarded the Japan Foundation Translation Fellowship twice, as well as several national and international grants from the governments of Mexico, Japan, and Canada. Her accolades include the Latin American Benemérito de América Award for her short story collection Hanami, the Northwest Regional Literature Award for En voz alta, the Sonora Award for Culture and the Arts, and third place in the 2022 Kusamakura International Haiku Competition.

She holds a Master’s degree in International Public Policy from Osaka University and studied Asian Studies at Kansai Gaidai University. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Hispanic American Literature at the Universidad Veracruzana (Mexico), with a dissertation focused on Hispanic American haiku.

Cristina is also the coordinator and translator of the first Japanese–Spanish digital haiku dictionary, available at www.haikukigo.com. She is a member of the Mexican Association of Former Fellows of Japan (AMEJ), the Mexican Association of Literary Translators (AMETLI), and the National System of Art Creators (SNCA).

Campus of the University of Vienna
Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies
Seminarraum JAP 1, 2K-EG-21, Ground floor to the left
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.4 (Campus), 1090 Vienna, Austria