Washington Cucurto

Born in 1973 in Quilimes/Argentina as Norberto Santiago Vega.

He studied literature at the University of Buenos Aires.

Co-founder and editor of Eloisa Cartonera, a publishing house as well as a social and cultural project, where works by young talented, prominent or forgotten authors from Latin America are published as individual books consisting of photocopied pages with covers of hand-painted cardboard, collected by “cartoneros” (the local name for those who scavenge through rubbish for anything of value or recyclable).

Known under the pseudonym Washington Cucurto, he has written poetry such as “La máquina de hacer paraguayitos” (“Machine making girls from Paraguay,” 1999) and “¡Oh, tù dominicana del demonio!” (2002). He is one of the chief agents of “realismo atolondrado”, an Argentinian literature playfully mixing gutter and high culture, cumbia and Whitman, comic strips and Gombrowicz.

He presented his work at the Argentinian embassy in Peru and at the Volksbühne in Berlin. „Cosa de negros” („Nigger Stuff”), a collection of short stories and novels, was selected as Book of the Year 2003 by the Argentinian daily newspaper Página 12.