Azahara Alonso

Invitado de Honor

(Oviedo, 1988) has a degree in Philosophy. She has published the book of aphorisms Bajas presiones (Trea, 2016), the poetry book Gestar un tópico (RIL, 2020) and the novel Gozo (Siruela, 2023), recognized as the Best Non-Fiction Book of 2023 by the Spanish Confederation of Guilds and Associations of Booksellers.

She has featured in several anthologies, including Bajo el signo de Atenea (Renacimiento, 2017), El gran libro de Satán (Blackie Books, 2021) and El gran libro de los pájaros (Blackie Books, 2023).

She was the coordinator of the Hotel Kafka writing school, and the cultural manager at the José Hierro Poetry Center Foundation. She also coordinated Ámbito cultural, published by El Corte Inglés, she was part of the editorial board of the magazine Nayagua, and she was the copy editor of the Diario Kafka cultural supplement at eldiario.es. She proofreads and writes literary criticism and teaches writing classes.

Other activities involving the participant:

Journeys. Tribute to Carmen Martín Gaite

Albert Pijuan

Invitado de Honor

(Calafell, 1985) is a writer, playwright and translator with a degree in Political Science and Philosophy. He has written novels and non-fiction books, and has premiered and published fifteen dramatic pieces, some of them abroad, performed in Chile, Italy, Iraq, and other countries. He has written stories for several magazines and anthologies, and some of his stories can be found in the book Seguiràs el ritme del fantasma jamaicà (Angle, 2017).

His first young adult novel, I diumenge, meteorit (Animallibres, 2023), was recently nominated for the Premi Llibreter 2024.

Originally published in Catalan under the title Tsunami (Angle, 2020), his work La gran ola is available in Spanish. It won the Pin i Soler Novel and Finestres de Narrativa prizes, as well as the Premio Nacional de la Crítica for fiction in Catalan; ¿Y si nos replanteamos el canibalismo? in an illustrated edition published by Libros del Zorro Rojo (2021), and in autumn 2024 his latest novel, El Gran Remplazo, will be published by Sexto Piso. He has also translated from English authors such as H. G. Wells, Lara Williams, Dalton Trumbo, Evelyn Waugh and Robert W. Chambers.

Ana Penyas

Invitado de Honor

(Valencia, 1987) is an illustrator and author of comics. In 2016, she won the VII Catálogo Iberoamericano Ilustra with the series Buscando un sitio. In 2017, she received the Premio Internacional de Novela Gráfica Fnac-Salamandra Graphic, thanks to which she published her first graphic novel We're all just fine (2017, Salamandra Graphic), where she talks about her grandmothers and the generation of women who grew up in the Franco era, and for which she received the Premio de Autora Revelación Nacional at the Salón del Cómic in Barcelona and the Premio Nacional de Cómic 2018.

She has published several illustrated albums, highlighting her work around historical memory: En transición (2017, Barlin libros) and Mexique, el nombre del barco (2017, El zorro rojo). She has worked as an illustrator on various feminist projects such as Pikara Magazine, the Jo tambè vaig ser piquetera calendar, and the illustrated notebook Biosindicalismo desde los territorios domésticos (2021, La Laboratorio and Fundación Rosa Luxemburg).

In 2021, she published Todo bajo el sol (2018, Salamandra Graphic), a reflection on the transformation of the Spanish Mediterranean coast as a result of tourism, which won the Éco-Fauve RAJA Award for Sous le soleil at the Festival de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême  (2023, 50th edition) and the ACDCómic Award for the best national work 2021.

In 2022, she developed, with anthropologist Alba Herrero Garcés, En una casa.Genealogía del trabajo del hogar y los cuidados, at the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, IVAM (11/2022-04/2023). The exhibition aimed to create a dialogue between ethnography and artistic creation, expanding collective, subaltern memory based on the experiences of workers and employers.

She is currently working on a new comic book, again with Salamandra Graphic, to be published in the fall of 2025.

Other activities involving the participant:

Social Context: Album and Comic as Engines of Change
#LeemosCómics con Ana Penyas y María Luque

Inés Martín Rodrigo

Invitado de Honor

(Madrid, 1983) is a writer and journalist. In 2022, she won the Nadal Prize with the novel Las formas del querer, which also received the Premio de la Crítica de Madrid. She is also the author of the biographical fiction Azules son las horas (2016), the anthology of interviews with women writers Una habitación compartida (2020), the children's story Giselle (2020), and the essay Una homosexualidad propia (2023).

In 2019, she was included in the “10 de 30” program of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), which every year recognizes the best Spanish writers under 40 years old. For 14 years she worked for the Culture section of the ABC newspaper and in June 2022, she joined the Prensa Ibérica group, where she is on the team of the literary supplement abril and writes opinion pieces.

Other activities involving the participant:

In no man's land: the place of war
Rain without ice, please: the world is thirsty
Journeys. Tribute to Carmen Martín Gaite
Journeys. Tribute to Ana María Matute