Karmele Jaio

Invitado de Honor

(Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1970) is the author of three storybooks, Hamabost zauri (2004), Zu bezain ahul (2007) and Ez naiz ni (2012); four novels, Amaren eskuak (2006), Musika airean (2010), Aitaren etxea (2019) and Maitasun kapitala (2023), and one poetry book, Orain hilak ditugu (2015). Her latest works in Spanish are Amor capital, No soy yo, La casa del padre and Las manos de mi madre. Her mother's hands has received the English Pen Award, and the novel Aitaren etxea has received the award Premio Euskadi de Literatura, the highest prize in Basque literature.

Her novel Amaren eskuak was highly acclaimed by readers and critics (it is one of the best-selling books in Basque literature), has received numerous awards, has been translated into several languages, adapted to cinema and presented at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

Her stories have also been adapted for theater and selected for, among others, the Best European Fiction 2017 (Dalkey Archive Press) and The Penguin Book of Spanish short stories (Penguin Classics) anthologies

Raquel Lanseros

Invitado de Honor

(Jerez de la Frontera, 1973)

She is a poet, translator, anthologist and university professor. She is the author of the poetry books Leyendas del Promontorio, Diario de un destello, Los ojos de la niebla, Croniria, Las pequeñas espinas son pequeñas, Matria and El sol y las otras estrellas.

She has received the following awards: Premio Nacional de la Crítica and Premio Andalucía de la Crítica, the Premio Internacional de Poesía Generación del 27, the Premio Unicaja de Poesía, a second place at the Premio Adonáis, the Premio de Poesía del Tren, the Premio Antonio Machado in Baeza, the Premio de Poesía Jaén, the Premio de Literatura Ciudad de Priego and the Premio de las Letras of the Academia San Dionisio in Jerez.

She is the host and writer of the third season of the “Un país para leerlo” literary outreach program of Radio Television Española (RTVE), which received during her tenure the IRIS Award for Best Outreach Program.

She also has a PhD in Education in Language and Literature, and she has written numerous academic publications in the field of poetry, gender studies, the mainstreaming of knowledge and translation.

Other activities involving the participant:

Poetry Room

Jordi Soler

Born in 1963 in La Portuguesa, a community of Catalan Republican exiles who founded a coffee plantation in the jungle of Veracruz, Mexico. La Portuguesa, a primitive enclave in the jungle, where the forces of nature devour each other, is the literary territory where a substantial part of its work is based.

He has written 14 novels, translated into several languages: Bocafloja (1994), La corsaria (1996), Nueve Aquitania (1999), La mujer que tenía los pies feos (2001), Los rojos de ultramar (2004), La última hora del último día (2007), La fiesta del oso (2009), Diles que son cadáveres (2011), Restos humanos (2013), Ese príncipe que fui (2015), El cuerpo eléctrico (2017), Usos rudimentarios de la selva (2018), Los hijos del volcán (2022), En el reino del toro sagrado (2024).

His novels have garnered various distinction, including the Prix Littéraire des Jeunes Européens (2012) and the Prix Jean-Morer (2020), in France; the Iberoamericano AsiCom-University of Oviedo Award (2014) in Spain, and the Poeta de América Carlos Pellicer Cámara Award (2021) in Mexico.

He is also the author of two poetry books and four non-fiction books: Ensayos bárbaros (2015), Mapa secreto del bosque (2019), La orilla celeste del agua (2021) and La resquebrajadura (2023).

Between 2000 and 2003, he was the cultural attaché at the Mexican Embassy in Dublin. He writes for the Mexican newspaper Milenio and the Spanish newspaper El País. He lives in Barcelona, the city his family left after the Spanish Civil War, and he is a Knight of the Irish Order of Finnegans.

Other activities involving the participant:

Spanish exile in Mexico
Journeys. Silent time. Tribute to Luis Martín-Santos

Jesús Ruiz Mantilla

Invitado de Honor

(Santander, 1965) is a writer. Throughout his career, he has worked in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He is the author of the novels Los ojos no ven; Preludio; Yo, Farinelli, el capón; Gordo (Sent Soví Award in 2005); Ahogada en llamas; La cáscara amarga; Hotel Transition (Fernando Quiñones Novel Award in 2015); El encuentro and Papel. In other genres, he has written Placer contra placer, Contar la música, and Divos, which reflect his journey as a music journalist over three decades for the newspaper El País, and Al día (Galaxia Gutenberg), a poetic experiment that blends a diary with poems drawn from everyday experiences reflected in the diary entries. For El País, he has spent most of his career in journalism in the Culture sections, or in the Babelia and El País Semanal supplements. He has also collaborated with the “The Window” and “Today” radio programs on Cadena Ser.

He is a professor in the CEU's Master's in Cultural Journalism, at the El País school, and he has taught university courses in Spain, Latin America and the United States. As a cultural manager, he is the artistic director of the Eñe festivals in Madrid and Málaga; of the Festival Internacional de Literatura en Español (FILE) in Extremadura and Murcia, and in Fronteras in Valencia, where he mixes musicians with writers. In addition, he is part of the team behind Creadores, a documentary series conceived by Alberto Anaut for La Fábrica, the leading cultural management company in Spain, of which he is a member of the executive team. The series is produced by Amazon, Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), and the Fundación La Caixa, and features ten-hour interviews with various artists from the Spanish-speaking world.

Other activities involving the participant:

With the past at our heels
The labyrinth of intrigue
Crossroads. Humor, illustration and literature