S7 Ep. 38: Nicolás Medina Mora on Mexico’s First Woman President and the Country’s Political Future

fiction/non/fiction

Journalist and novelist Nicolás Medina Mora joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and guest co-host Matt Gallagher to talk about Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be the first woman and first Jewish person to lead the country. Medina Mora explains current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s history, his hold on Mexico’s political imagination, and how his connections to Sheinbaum will affect policy moving forward as he uses his last days in office to attempt 18 changes to Mexico’s constitution. Medina Mora, who is an editor at the Mexican magazine Nexos, reflects on writing about Lopez Obrador through both fiction and journalism. He elaborates on a pre-election piece he wrote for The New York Review of Books and also reads from his novel, América del Norte, in which he plays with the relationship between fiction and nonfiction.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Nicolás Medina Mora

• América del Norte
• Where Next for Mexico? | Nicolás Medina Mora | The New York Review of Books
• Nexos

Others

• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 32: "Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction"
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 17: "Ed Park on Korea’s Past, Real and Imagined"
• "Mexico’s outgoing president pushes ahead with plan to fire 1,600 judges" by Christine Murray | Financial Times
• "Mexico’s bloodiest election in history sends new asylum-seekers to the US border" by Caitlin Stephen Hu, David Culver, Norma Galeana and Evelio Contreras| CNN
• The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

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