Guadalajara International Book Fair

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Guest of Honor Pavilion

Spain, Guest of Honor
Guest of Honor Pavilion
Journeys. Tribute to Carmen Martín Gaite

The year 2025 will mark the centenary of the birth of Carmen Martín Gaite (1925-2000), the Salamanca native who was one of the most outstanding and renowned voices of Spanish literature. In 1978, she was the first woman to receive the National Fiction Award for Back Room, a prize she received again in 1994 for her work as a whole. In 1988, she shared the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature with poet José Valente. Her vocation for writing led her to explore all literary genres: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, story, drama, children's literature, literary criticism, translation and screenplays for cinema and television. But it was her non-novel phase that introduced her to the public at large. Her long career began in the post-war period and continued through the Transition to reach the 90s, with Spain as a full-fledged democracy. Behind the Curtains, Back Room, Caperucita en Manhattan, Variable Cloud variable and Los parentescos, her last and unfinished novel, are some of the unforgettable books for readers and writers of all generations who turned Carmen Martín Gaite into a leading author both inside and outside Spain. Her literature was never detached from reality, from the political, social and existential changes that writers of the so-called Generation of '50 experienced, who, under the gray and precarious skies of the Franco dictatorship, shared stories and common desires. "Literature is like a quenching of that thirst for expression that life sometimes denies us," she once declared. And it is precisely of that quenching, of that thirst for expression that her words speak. Of loneliness, of the impossibility of communication, but also of friendship; of women prisoners in physical and emotional spaces in constant search for interlocutors and escape routes that reaffirm their identity and release them from the parameters set by a patriarchal society will be some of the topics that will be addressed in this discussion around the life and vocation to literature of an exceptional author.

Participants: María Folguera, Azahara Alonso

Moderator: Inés Martín Rodrigo

María Folguera

Invitado de Honor

(Madrid, 1984) She is a writer and cultural manager. She is currently preparing her fourth novel with a grant for literary creation from the Ministry of Culture. In 2024, she is premiering the stage adaptation of El cuarto de atrás by Carmen Martín Gaite. Other drama projects include Marcela:una canción de Cervantes alongside Leticia Dolera and Celia Freijeiro (2024, on tour), Picasso (rey, monstruo y payaso) for Rhum & Cia (2023), Humanidad:cinco visiones de Goya para circo (2023, Teatro Circo Price) and Safo with Christina Rosenvinge and Marta Pazos (2022). She directs and wrote the tow-piece work Elena Fortún [Sendero Fortún] for the National Drama Center (CDN) (2019-2020) and La guerra según Santa Teresa, which premiered at the Autumn Festival in Madrid in 2018.

She is the author of the novels Hermana.(Placer) (2021, Alianza), Los primeros días de Pompeya (2016, Caballo de Troya) and Sin juicio (2001, Premio Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid; 2002, Visor). She coordinated the anthology Tranquilas.Historias para ir solas por la noche (2019, Lumen), for which she wrote the prologue and a story. She has appeared in various fiction anthologies: (h)amor9 amigas (2024, Continta Me Tienes), Última temporada (2013, Lengua de Trapo) and Bajo treinta (2013, Salto de página).

She received the Premio Valle-Inclán de Textos Teatrales in 2008 for Hilo debajo del agua and the CajaMadrid Narrative Prize in 2011 for Verlaine hijo. She studied Stage Direction at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático (RESAD) and Theory of Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. From 2018 to 2023, she served as the artistic director of Teatro Circo Price in Madrid. Since 2024, she has been an advisor for projects at the Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música (INAEM), the Centro de Documentación de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música (CDAEM) and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E).

Other activities involving the participant:
"I'm here for you, no matter what." Friendship

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:
Free time with a tourist personality

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
Free time with a tourist personality
Journeys. Tribute to Ana María Matute

Tuesday December 03
16:00 to 16:50
Pabellón de España, Expo Guadalajara