Plaza Requiem

Stories at the Edge of Ordinary Lives

By Martha Batiz

2017

First Published

4.57

Average Rating

128

Number of Pages

3H54M

Audio Length

Mexican-Canadian Martha Batiz has crafted, in her first collection written in English, visceral stories with piercing and evocative qualities. She has filled her recognizable, sisterly/motherly, and imaginative characters with qualities we all hold close to our hearts, but this is powerfully juxtaposed by the uncertainty that lurks at the edges of ordinary lives. Most often they are women, trapped in violent relationships, facing dangerous political situations, or learning to live with the pain of betrayal. Yet Batiz's stories shimmer with the emotional surge of vindication, evoking the rewards women attain after a powerful exploration of their darkest moments. As an emerging writer, Batiz crafts her stories with qualities reminiscent of Joyce Carol Oates, Shirley Jackson, and Cuban author Leonardo Padura: with precision, haunting vision, and the will to survive all odds.

Avg Rating

4.57

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

64%

4 STARS

29%

3 STARS

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Martha Batiz

Author · 3 books

Martha Batiz was born and raised in Mexico City, but has been living in Toronto since 2003. She started publishing in 1993 at age 22. Her articles, chronicles, reviews and short stories have appeared in diverse newspapers and magazines not only in her homeland, but also in Spain, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Peru, Ireland, England, the United States, Australia, and Canada. Her first book was a short-story collection called A todos los voy a matar (I’m Going To Kill Them All, Castillo Press, 2000). Her award-winning novella The Wolf’s Mouth/ Damiana's Reprieve (Exile Editions, 2009 and 2018, respectively) was originally published in Spanish both in the Dominican Republic and in Mexico (Boca de lobo, in 2007 and 2008, respectively), and is available on Audible in Spanish since 2021. The Wolf's Mouth/Damiana's Reprieve is available in French as La Gueule du Loup since 2018. A second short-story collection titled De tránsito (In Transit) was published in 2014 in Puerto Rico by Terranova Editores, and received an honorary mention in the International Latino Book Awards in San Francisco in 2015. Martha went on to win the First Place in the International Latino Book Awards in 2018 for her first short-story collection in English, Plaza Requiem: Stories at the Edge of Ordinary Lives (Exile Editions, 2017). Her most recent book is another short-story collection titled No Stars in the Sky (House of Anansi Press, 2022). Martha holds a PhD in Latin American Literature and is an ATA-certified literary translator. Besides being the founder and instructor of the Creative Writing in Spanish course currently offered by the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto, she is a part-time Professor at York University/Glendon College, where she teaches Spanish literature and language, and Literary Translation. In 2014, Martha was featured in Latinos Magazine among the Top Ten Most Successful Mexicans in Canada. In 2015, she was chosen as one of the Top Ten Most Influential Hispanic-Canadians. Martha's work has been widely anthologized in Mexico and within the Hispanic-Canadian community in Canada. She was part of the editorial committee of the very successful anthology Historias de Toronto (Toronto Stories. Lugar Comun, Ottawa, 2016).