Andrea Cote

Author of the poetry books La ruina que nombro (2015), Puerto calcinado, Cosas frágiles and Chinatown a toda hora (Libro Objeto). She has also published the prose books Una fotógrafa al desnudo:Tina Modotti and Blanca Varela o la escritura de la soledad. She studied Literature at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and completed her PhD in Hispanic American Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She has received several awards, including: Premio Nacional de Poesía de la Universidad Externado de Colombia (2003), Premio Internacional de Poesía Puentes de Struga (2005) and the Cittá de Castrovillari Prize (2010) for Porto in cenere, the Italian version of Puerto calcinado. Her poems have been translated into English, French, German, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Macedonian, Arabic, Polish, and Greek. She is part of the faculty for the Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).

Chiki Fabregat

Invitado de Honor

is the daughter of a children's story writer and grew up listening to stories in which she and her siblings were the protagonists. She has a degree in Hispanic Philology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and coordinates the Children's and Young Adult Literature department at the Escuela de Escritores. She teaches in-person courses and specialized subjects in the Master's program in Fiction and the Specialization Course in Teaching Creative Writing. She balances her work at the Escuela de Escritores with writing, promoting reading among children and adolescents, and training teachers.

She has published the Zoila collection of young adult fantasy literature with Edebé, and the novel Cuando la luna llora, which was a finalist for the XXVII Edebé Prize. With Diquesí, she published the children's novel Trece días para arreglar a papá, and with DNX, El año de la guarida. She is the co-author of the books Cuentos para educar II, Cuentos para prevenir, Cuentos para coeducar, Cuentos para fomentar la autoestima, and Cuentos sobre el ocio activo from the Spanish Confederation of Associations of Parents and Mothers of Students (CEAPA), as well as the Los superhéroes collection under the collective pseudonym Isaura Lee. In 2021, she won the Premio SM Gran Angular with El cofre de na

Other activities involving the participant:

The Pleasure of Reading Gala
One Thousand Young People with Care Santos

Javier Sagarna

Invitado de Honor

Writer and professor of Creative Writing. With a degree in Pharmacy, he is the Director of the Escuela de Escritores and a member of the Board of Directors of the European Association of Creative Writing Programmes (EACWP), which he chaired between 2010 and 2023. He teaches the Literary Genres and Fiction Projects courses in the Master's degree in Fiction Writing.

He has taught at institutions such as the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the Orivesi College of Arts (Finland), the ArtEZ University of the Arts (Netherlands), the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón (Puerto Rico) and the University of Curaçao.

He has given several international conferences on teaching and pedagogy of creative writing, and promoted teacher exchanges with institutions such as ArtEZ, the University of Texas in El Paso (United States) and Scuola Holden (Italy).

He has published the novels Mudanzas (2006, Gens) and El Misterio del emérito en el emirato (2023, Binomio), the story books Ahora tan lejos (2011, Menoscuarto) and Nuevas aventuras de Olsson y Laplace (2015, Menoscuarto) and the children's novel Rafa y la jirafa (2013, Dylar).

He is a collaborator on the La Ventana program on Cadena SER, where he directs the Relatos en Cadena competition.

Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny

Holds a degree in Hispanic Literature from the Universidad de Sonora, a Master's Degree in Humanities from the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and a Master's Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Texas. An author of fiction and non-fiction books, she has been anthologized in Mexico, the United States, Australia, South Korea and Peru. Her works include the novels Todo Esto Es Yo (2015, Premio Nacional de Novela Tamaulipas), Trash (2022, Tránsito) and El libro de Aisha (2022, Literatura Random House). She is also the author of a youth LGBTQ series titled Coming Out, published by Epic Press. She has specialized in topics such as character development, self-writing, hybrid narratives, and pedagogy for teaching creative writing. She has directed theses ranging from novels and memoirs to collections of poetry. She has given workshops in Mexico, the United States, Colombia and Spain. She designed a course on story construction for Doméstika.

Since 2016, she has been an associate professor in the MFA in Bilingual Creative Writing at the University of Texas, where she is currently the Director of the Online Master's Degree. She coordinates CasaOctavia, a residence for writers and members of the LGBT+ community.