Your Impossible Voice Issue 29 Cover

Fire Trances

by Iliana Vargas (tr. Lena Greenberg and Michelle Mirabella)

Your Impossible Voice, 2023

“Fire Trances” examines themes of religion, (in)sanity, language, and the role of women through a surreal lens, referencing the oneiric musings of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and her Primero Sueño, with a nod in the epigraph to the theophany that is at the heart of Philip K. Dick’s Valis. This tale of possession (by the Devil? by a god?) becomes increasingly apocalyptic as it unfolds in a cinematic and cryptic fashion, leaving readers with the disconcerting sensation of a text with neither a beginning nor an end. 

  • Nominated by YIV for Deep Vellum's Best Literary Translations anthology