Ada Salas

Invitado de Honor

(Cáceres, 1965) studied Hispanic Philology at the Universidad de Extremadura. She has taught courses, workshops, seminars and conferences at centers such as Institutos Cervantes, Fundación Juan March, La Casa Encendida, Fundación Centro de Poesía José Hierro, and at book fairs, including in Guadalajara and Frankfurt.

She has published, among others, the books of poetry: Arte y memoria del inocente (1988, Universidad de Extremadura, Juan Manuel Rozas Award); Variaciones en blanco (1994, Hiperión, Hiperión Award); Esto no es el silencio (2008, Hiperión, Ciudad de Córdoba Award); No duerme el animal (2009, Hiperión), which contained almost all of her work until then; Descendimiento (2018, Pre-Textos) and Arqueologías (2022, Pre-Textos). In collaboration with photographer Tete Alejandre, she published Reflecjos (2006), and with painter Jesús Placencia, Ashes to Ashes (2011, Editora Regional de Extremadura) and Diez Mandamientos (2016, La Oficina de Arte y Ediciones). In 2021, Criba (Pezsilver editions) appeared, bringing together poems with artwork by Laura Lio.

The Escribir y borrar anthology (2016, Fondo de Cultura Económica) includes a selection of her essays, such as: Alguien aquí. Notas acerca de la escritura poética (2005, Hiperión); El margen. El error. La tachadura (De la metáfora y otros asuntos más o menos poéticos) (2011, Diputación de Badajoz, Premio de Ensayo Fernando Pérez) and Lengua del alma (2019, Fundación Juan March).

In 2021, she premiered Descendimiento at the Teatro de la Abadía in Madrid, directed by Carlos Marquerie, with music by Niño de Elche.

In 2019, she received the Medal of Extremadura for her career.

Together with Juan Abeleira, she translated A la misteriosa y Las tinieblas by Robert Desnos (Hiperión).

La sed, Lugar de la derrota and Esto no es el silencio have been translated into Swedish, Descendimiento into German, and Arqueologías into Italian.

Jorge Ortega

Mexican poet and essayist. PhD in Hispanic philology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he obtained the grade of Outstanding cum laude with a thesis on surrealist poetry in Latin America. Since 1992 he has published more than fifteen poetry titles in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, the United States, Canada and Italy, among which are Ajedrez de polvo (2003), Estado del tiempo (2005), Devoción por la piedra (2011, 2016), Guía de forasteros (2014) and Hotel del Universo (2023). His poetic work has been translated into English, Mandarin, German, Portuguese, French and Italian, and has been included in multiple compilations of contemporary Mexican poetry. He has also collaborated with poems, reviews and critical texts on poetry in various magazines in Latin America, such as Buenos Aires Poetry, Letras Libres, Periódico de Poesía, Quimera and Revista de Occidente, as well as in others of the Anglo-Saxon world: Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, World Literature Today, Poetry International and International Poetry Review. Also, he has participated in literature congresses and poetry festivals in various cities in America, Europe and Asia, and he has worked as a visiting professor at different universities in California. In 2000 and 2002 he was a fellow in the poetry specialty of the Young Creators program of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts, a call and institution in which he was a poetry tutor during the period 2018-2019. He coordinated the nineteenth and twentieth-century literature volume of the series El patrimonio histórico y cultural de México (1810-2010) printed in 2013 for the Mexican Library collection of the Ministry of Culture. His book Dévotion pour la pierre was published in Quebec in 2018 at the house Les Éditions de La Grenouillère in the French version by Françoise Roy. His bilingual Spanish-Italian poetry anthology Luce sotto le pietre, which the Edizoni Fili d Aquilone label prepared from his work, appeared in 2020 in Rome, Italy, translated by Alessio Brandolini. Among other recognitions, he has won the Baja California State Literature Awards, the Tijuana National Poetry Award, the Jaime Sabines International Poetry Award and the Gilberto Owen National Literature Award. He is currently part of the National System of Art Creators of Mexico.

Other activities involving the participant:

Poetry Room
Literature with eggs and machaca