Nomad for Love: A Tilsa Otta Folio

Tilsa Otta is a writer and audiovisual artist born in Peru in 1982. Her poetry collections include Antimateria. Gran acelerador de poemas (approximately translated Antimatter: Great Accelerator of Poems; Juan Malasuerte [Mexico], 2016), as well as Indivisible (2007) and Mi niña veneno en el jardín de las baladas del recuerdo (approximately translated My Poison Girl in the Garden of the Ballads of Memory, 2004), both published by Álbum del Universo Bakterial. Otta is also the author of the comic VA (Contexto Editorial, 2017), co-authored with Rita Ponce de León, and a book of short stories Un ejemplar extraño (approximately translated A Strange Specimen; Solar, 2012). In 2021, she published the novel Lxs niñxs de oro de la alquimia sexual (approximately translated The Golden Children of Sexual Alchemy) with Random House.

Otta studied film direction at the Instituto Charles Chaplin in Lima and photography at the Image Center in Lima. She completed her film studies with a master’s degree from the LENS School of Visual Arts in Madrid.

This folio, edited by poet and translator Farid Matuk, is drawn from The Hormone of Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2024).