Mario Jursich Durán was born in Valledupar (Colombia) on June 4, 1964. Until February 2016, he was director of the magazine El Malpensante, of which he is also one of the founding members. Under his leadership, the magazine won the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Award eleven times and he himself obtained that award in 2018. He served as editorial director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica between 2016 and 2019 and is currently the host of the program «Del Canto al Cuento» on National Radio and professor in the journalism master's degree at the Icesi University of Cali.

He has published seven books, among which are: ¡Fuera zapato viejo! Crónicas, retratos y entrevistas sobre la salsa en Bogotá, El impúdico brebaje. Los cafés de Bogotá 1866-2015, Archivo Gaitán. Una memoria gráfica de El Bogotazo y Miradas cruzadas. Las relaciones entre Austria y Colombia.

Since 2012 he has collaborated with the Fundación de Periodismo Iberoamericano –FNPI– as a workshop teacher and in 2013 the Guadalajara Fair named him part of the committee in charge of electing the jury for the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages. He writes for the magazines Arcadia from Bogotá and Letras Libres from Mexico City.