The Parrot and the Cannon  is a study of the inception and development of Latin American literary journalism and the emergence of an original Latin American literature. Narrative journalism has played a central role in the formation of national identities of the various countries and in the supra-national idea of Latin America as a consolidated region. Beginning in the 1840s and ending in the 1970s, Calvi connects the evolution of literary journalism with the consolidation of Latin America’s literary sphere, the professional practice of journalism, the development of the modern mass media, and the establishment of nation-states in the region.
 

Pablo Calvi, the first non-native, English speaker to receive a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship in the history of the Pulitzer Prizes, is an assistant professor at Stony Brook University's School of Journalism, where he teaches courses in multimedia journalism and Latin American literary journalism. He is the Associate Director for Latin America for the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting.

Calvi received his Ph.D. from Columbia University School of Journalism in 2011. He is a guest lecturer at Columbia University/Universitat de Barcelona master's program in Barcelona, Spain, and has taught comparative Latin American and Anglo American narrative journalism at the Graduate School of Communications at Sorbonne University in Paris, France.

Calvi is an active, multilingual journalist and author. In the United States, he has worked for the New York Daily News, Grey Magazine, Men’s Journal,Latin Trade and Terra Magazine. His long-form journalism appears in The Believer. In Latin America he has worked for the Argentine newspaper Clarín, Colombian-Mexican magazine Gatopardo and Brazilian multimedia Terra. He was the recipient of the 2010 Greenberg Research Prize for Literary Journalism Studies and the winner of the 2010 CELSA-Sorbonne Writing Fellowship.

He has authored a number of book chapters and academic papers on Latin American literary journalism. His main interests are Latin American narrative journalism, the genre known as crónica, multimedia journalism, and the correlation between democratic societies and the free press.

"Calvi’s running comparison of Latin American literary journalism with the various phases of journalism in the United States is a strong, well-founded aspect of this book. Equally important, perhaps even more so, is the development of an alternative literary journalism in the likes of Rodolfo Walsh and Gabriel García Márquez, and the similarities regarding truthfulness and fiction with American ‘new journalists’ as well as the contrasts with them. The testimonial aspect of this literary journalism is an important aspect as well as Cuba’s role in consecrating it as a genre in its prestigious prizes. All in all, Latin American Adventures in Literary Journalism is a worthy read, a very well written one." ​—George Yúdice, University of Miami