Years ago I read about a program that Paul Auster had on the American public radio network, NPR, called "The National Short Story Project." Auster went on the air the first night and asked American listeners to send in stories about him. The only two conditions, he told them, were that they must be true and short. What interested him most, he told them, were “stories that challenge our expectations of the world, anecdotes that reveal those mysterious and unknown forces that influence our lives, our family histories, our minds and bodies, our souls. That is, true stories that seem like fiction. Then a variant of the same idea occurred to me: to become a kind of storyteller for others. Just like a reporter or journalist would, I would be attentive to stories that people told me, seemingly banal, innocuous, small and insignificant stories. And I did that throughout 2009. Searching for and telling stories from others, stories that I was collecting –in Guatemala, in Mexico, in Iowa City, in Havana, in La Rioja, in Geneva– in the same way that someone, half lost, picks up stones or petals or bread crumbs. Some people shouted them at me, others whispered them to me, still others stuttered them to me – but always, each one, with their own eloquence.