Litro congratulates contributor Pablo Baler, winner of the 2025 New American Fiction Prize for his forthcoming novel, Gilroy’s Gloryhole. The novel will be published by New American Press in 2026.

Baler recently appeared in Litro with “Pearl Hunter”, translated by Slava Faybysh, followed by a Litro audio spotlight in which he reflected on the story’s dream-logic, comic structure, and strange visual origin: the echo between an oyster shell and a set of dentures. The piece’s dark humour and formal play now sit in a wider context: Baler’s fiction moves between satire, abstraction, literary experiment, and the charged imaginative geography of Los Angeles.

Originally from Buenos Aires and now based in Los Angeles, Baler is a writer, art critic, scholar, and Professor of Latin American Literature and Creative Writing at California State University, Los Angeles. His work spans fiction, criticism, cultural journalism, and experimental prose.

Gilroy’s Gloryhole is Baler’s debut novel in English. The book is described in its jacket materials as a black comedy — or, more precisely, a “screwball tragedy” — following Ted Ritchie, a washed-up television actor with literary ambitions, as he spirals through delusion, humiliation, celebrity ruin, and the possibility of poetic redemption in Los Angeles.

The New American Fiction Prize is awarded by New American Press, an independent literary publisher of contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation.

Read Pablo Baler’s Litro spotlight on “Pearl Hunter”, listen to the accompanying audio feature, and visit Pablo Baler’s website.

Further details are available from the Cal State LA announcement and New American Press.