Luis Jaramillo Archives - Public Seminar

Literature

Blasphemy Is a Victimless Crime

In the 2025 William Phillips Lecture, Salman Rushdie discusses freedom, defiance, fame, and the lesson of the ham sandwich

April 15, 2025 • by Luis Jaramillo and Salman Rushdie

In March, acclaimed author Salman Rushdie visited The New School to deliver the 2025 William Phillips Lecture, a talk titled “Blasphemy Is a Victimless Crime.” Rushdie, the author of 15 novels, including the Booker Prize–winning Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses, and nonfiction books including, most recently, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, ...

The Witches of El Paso

An excerpt from a new novel on the supernatural power of family

December 11, 2024 • by Luis Jaramillo

On the bridge to Juárez, Marta peers down at the Rio Grande trickling along its concrete ditch. The air is heavy with diesel exhaust. People walk across the bridge carrying bright blue and red plastic bags, pushing granny carts toward El Paso. Marta thinks back to when she was a girl, ...

Generations of Women in The Witches of El Paso

“The rules are going to be broken”

December 11, 2024 • by Marisol Aveline Delarosa and Luis Jaramillo

In his debut novel, The Witches of El Paso (Primero Sueño Press and Atria Books, 2024), Luis Jaramillo provides readers a sweeping multi-generational story about Nena, a woman living in World War II–era El Paso who begs for a new life and finds herself transported to colonial Mexico, where she ...