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The book has resonated in the Spanish speaking world in the last two years - Xilonen says she has received messages from readers telling her she made them laugh and cry in equal measure. In English, the translation comes from Andrea Rosenberg, published by Europa Editions. The Gringo Champion, which won the prestigious Mauricio Achar award in Mexico in 2015, has been translated into eight languages. In the exchanges that followed, she merged stories about life and family with more considered thoughts about the book and its reception at home and abroad. Cough,” she wrote in one of our first exchanges. I spent all of yesterday in bed but I had to study for an exam at university. I was horribly ill with the flu last week. She was casually affectionate from the beginning, in a way that feels immediately familiar, and which I rarely encounter in the English-speaking world. I first got in touch with her over email. Xilonen is generous, honest and oftentimes unmeasured. “Film is the love of my life and literature is discipline.” “Film is actually my first passion, and afterwards comes literature,” she told me. She’s now finishing her film studies in Mexico. Xilonen started working on The Gringo Champion at age sixteen, on the side of a job she still holds as a part-time cashier in her grandmother’s shop. The novel is funny, crude, experimental, and peppered with words that Liborio makes up as he discovers more and more language through reading. Among anxiety-inducing episodes, violence, and an insane amount of swearing, the story follows Liborio as he scrambles to survive, gets a job at a bookstore and develops a love for literature - and boxing. The book tells the story of a young Mexican boy, Liborio, who crosses the border into the United States undocumented. Aura Xilonen wrote her debut novel The Gringo Champion ( Campeón Gabacho) at age nineteen.