Ignacio Padilla (born 1968) was a Mexican author and essayist. He spent his youth in South Africa and studied literature in Mexico, Scotland, and Spain, where he received his PhD from the University of Salamanca. Padilla belonged, along with Jorge Volpi and other writers, to a literary group that called itself the “Crack Generation.” The group was founded as a counter-reaction to the literature of the “Latin American Boom,” which was characterized, among other things, by magic realism, and whose writers included Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa among others. Padilla published six novels, eight collections of short stories, essays, and many articles. He won countless international awards and his writings have been translated into many languages. In 2001, Padilla was appointed cultural attaché for the Mexican embassy of Great Britain, a post he held for two years. Padilla worked as a teacher at The Ibero-American University (“Universidad Iberoamericana”) in Mexico City, and in 2007 was appointed by President Felipe Calderon, as the director of the Mexican National Library. Ignacio Padilla was killed in a car accident in August 2016.
