Bernardo Atxaga

Invitado de Honor

(Asteasu, 1951) is a writer, whose real name is Jose Irazu Garmendia.

His books, originally written in Basque, include Obabakoak (1989, Premio Euskadi and Premio Nacional de Narrativa awards, finalist in the IMPAC European Literary Award), Memorias de una vaca (1992, included in the catalog 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up by Julia Eccleshare), Lone man (1994), Esos cielos (1997), Accordionist's son) (2004, Grinzane Cavour Award, Mondello Award, Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize), Seven houses in France (2009, one of the best fiction books in the United States in 2012, according to Publishers Weekly), Días de Nevada (2014, Euskadi Award, finalist at the PEN Awards in the United States), Casas y tumbas (2020), Desde el otro lado (2022); Un grillo en la autopista (2023) and Exteriores del paraíso (2023).

In the field of poetry, he published his first book, Etiopia, in 1978, and won the Cesare Pavese Award in 2003 for the Italian translation of Poemas & híbridos, Dall’altra parte della frontiera. His works can be read in 35 languages, and adapted for film by Montxo Armendáriz (Obaba, 2005), Aizpea Goenaga (Zeru horiek, 2006), Imanol Rayo (Bi anai, 2011) and Fernando Bernues (Accordionist's son, 2018).

He has received the Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas (2019), Premio LIBER (2021) and Premio Ostana (2023) awards. He has been a member of Euskaltzaindia, the Basque Language Academy since 2006.

Julieta Valero

Invitado de Honor

(Madrid, 1971)

Poet and writer, is the author of the poetry books Altar de los días parados (Madrid, Bartleby, 2003), Los heridos graves (Barcelona, DVD, 2005, IV Premio de Poesía Radio Joven of RNE-3; digital edition: Musa a las 9, 2014), Autoría (Barcelona, DVD, 2010, XXII Premio de Poesía Cáceres Patrimonio de la Humanidad and Premio Ausiàs March 2010), Que concierne (Vaso Roto, 2015, chosen one of the best three collection of poems of the year by El cultural and ABC.es), Los tres primeros años (Vaso Roto, 2019, selected as one of the best books of poems of the year by El Mundo), Mitad (Vaso Roto, 2021) and she recently published No obstantísimas (Vaso Roto, 2024). She co-authored a book where images and prose coexist, La nostalgia es una revuelta.Las postales de Julieta Valero y Oleñka (Madrid, Tigres de Papel, 2017).

In 2021, Caballo de Troya (Random House) published her first novel, Niños aparte (chosen in Spain by the newspaper El País as one of the best novels of 2021 and nominated in France for the Lectures Plurielles Best First Novel Prize).

In 2018, a selection of her works was published in an Italian translation, I feriti gravi e altre poesie (Raffaelli Editore). In 2019, Was Betrifft (Que concierne), an anthology in German (Ludwig). In 2020, she was included in the 10 Contemporary Spanish Women Poets (Shearsman Books, ed. and trans. by Terence Dooley). In 2022, her work Los tres primeros años was published in Italy as I Priri Tre Anni (Edizioni Ensemble, trans. by Valentina Tomassini).

She has a degree in Hispanic Philology from the Complutense University, and has worked in the world of publishing and cultural management. For over twenty years, she has hosted workshops on writing/reading poetry.

Since 2008, she has worked at the Fundación Centro de Poesía José Hierro, which she has been running since 2018.

Marta Fernández

Invitado de Honor

Journalist and writer who studied Journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She began her career at Diario 16 and Televisión Española (TVE). In 1997, she first appeared on camera on Telemadrid. Two years later, she became part of the founding team of CNN+. She remained with the news channel until 2007. That year, she joined Mediaset to take over the midday news program. She stayed with the Italian group until 2016 as a presenter for Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro, programs focused on political current affairs and special reports.

A regular contributor to the cultural magazine Jot Down and GQ, she joined El País in 2017.She later collaborated with Vanity Fair, where she directed and presented the book podcast "Nota al pie."Since 2013, she has participated in La Ventana on Cadena SER, and starting this season, she has her own segment on the program "Academia de saberes inútiles." In recent years, she has realized her dream of interviewing the writers she admires most and lending her voice to audiobooks.

She has published a novel, Te regalaré el mundo, and No te enamores de cobardes, a journey through the myths of cinema and literature. Her latest book is a historical essay on imposture: La mentira, Historia de impostores y engañados. However, the literary activity she dedicates the most energy to is being an advocate for Thomas Pynchon in Spain.

Other activities involving the participant:

Encounter with the strange: vibrations, ghosts, homes and insects
Portrait of a time with family
One-way trip from nowhere
The mystery of the imagination that creates (and destroys) worlds
"I'm here for you, no matter what." Friendship
Speak, wish
Crossroads. Music, poetry and literature