This spring, we welcomed Obermann International Fellow Gabriela Román Fuentes, an award-winning Mexican author, to campus. Her research centers on the representation of illness and female bodies in contemporary Latin American literature. “I am interested in the way diseases are depicted and how authors address pain and intimacy in their writing, as well as how bodies and illnesses have shaped their work,” Fuentes explains. “I regard illness and female bodies not only as mere topics, but also as a structural device and/or a maker of their Poetics.” This research is the foundation for two of Fuentes’s new creative projects, a novel about a woman suffering from an autoimmune disease and a play about hysteria. 

Fuentes utilized her Obermann fellowship to immerse herself in research texts she would not be able to easily access in her home country. “Thanks to the material I consulted at the University Libraries, particularly in the Hardin Health Sciences Library and the extensive collection of contemporary Latin American literature, I was able to work on two creative texts, a novel and a play,” she says. “My research has also afforded me valuable insight for my work as a creative writing professor.” 

Fuentes found the interdisciplinary nature of the University of Iowa’s collections and the scholarly exchanges facilitated by the Obermann Center to be especially valuable. Through engaging in dialogue with other international fellows and attending Obermann’s 2025 Arts & Humanities Symposium, she encountered perspectives from other fields that greatly enriched her work: 

“The Obermann Center propitiated rewarding encounters with fellow researchers and scholars from different fields, such as media, theatre, and medicine, which I rarely have the chance to encounter. In my past experiences as a fellow, I was primarily in contact with people devoted to literature, such as writers and translators.”

For a creative writer like Fuentes, perhaps the highlight of the fellowship was having a quiet place to write, stocked with freshly brewed coffee and delicious snacks. “I am deeply thankful for the wonderful and welcoming staff of the Obermann Center and my beautiful office there," she writes. "During the Fellowship, I was able to write profusely.”

Fuentes is leaving Iowa City with a full draft of her play, an outline and several chapters of her novel, and research for a paper about the representation of illness and female bodies in contemporary Latin American narrative, which she hopes will form the basis for a future PhD proposal. She also aims to use her research as the foundation for a creative writing workshop in Mexico, where female workshop attendees will write about bodies and illness. “The aim of the workshop is to empower women through their personal stories and to stimulate research and critical thinking,” she says.

Reflecting on her overall fellowship experience, Fuentes emphasizes how research, creativity, and interdisciplinary exchange inform one another. “Research is a substantial part of my creative process, and I firmly believe that to be a writer entails being a researcher. I applaud the initiative of the Obermann Center for sheltering both researchers and artists from outside the United States and am glad that the importance of investigation in artistic creation is recognized here.”