The University of Guadalajara, through a project created by the Environmental Sciences Museum as part of the University’s Cultural Center, and with the support of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, has established the José Emilio Pacheco City and Nature Award. The prize, which will be given for the first time this year, will be dedicated to poetry. The winning author, who must write in Spanish and have at least ten unpublished poems or poems published in the last five years that are related to nature, urban sustainability, socio-ecological harmony and environmental conservation, will be given a purse of US $10,000. The award is dedicated to poet José Emilio Pacheco, whose work explores the duality between cities and nature.
Important:
The call closed the past June 17th
Created by the University of Guadalajara, and with the collaboration of the National Institute for Indigenous Languages, the Culture Ministry, the National Commission for the Development of the Indigenous Cultures and Jalisco’s Department of Education, the American Indigenous Literature Award is granted to enrich, protect and promote the legacy and richness of Mexico’s indigenous peoples through literature in all its forms, and to and acknowledge and further develop the careers and works of indigenous authors. The award, which carries a purse of US $25,000, will be given for the fourth time at the 2016 FIL Guadalajara.
Important:
The call closed the past July 12th 
The SM Ibero-American Award for Literature for Children and Young People was implemented in 2005, the year of Ibero-American literature, with the goal of promoting literature for children and young people throughout Ibero-America. The award is given out each year during the Guadalajara International Book Fair to recognize writers of literature for children and young people and carries a purse of US $30,000.
Juan Carlos Quezadas
Karime Cardona Cury
With the goal of creating a network that helps to encourage the work of illustrators of books for children and young people in Ibero-America, the SM Foundation and the FIL Guadalajara invites illustrators to submit their work to be included in the Annual Ibero-American Illustration Catalog. The 45 works selected will be displayed in an exposition at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. In addition, illustrators will have the opportunity to work on an illustrated book with Ediciones SM and the winner will be given US $5,000. You can find more information at: www.iberoamericailustra.com
Important:
The call closed the past April 25thProgram Search
FIL Forum Shows
Free entrance
Spain, Guest of Honor
FIL Forum Shows
Sés
Sés
SES is a singer-songwriter with a long career who is an icon in the current Galician scene. Already a classic on the music scene, her prolific work continues to have full presence after 13 years of activity and 8 albums, thanks to her exceptional artistic ability, charisma and strength on stage.
The eclectic aesthetic that characterizes her, which combines her own traditional influences with the multiple and diverse styles that have nourished it (the author's own songs, Latin American folklore, rock & roll...) is subordinated to the literary expressiveness of the songs. Her lyrics codify both vital aspects of the artist and reflections of a social and political nature.
The philosophical charge of her writing is nothing short of a reflection of a restless personality and brilliant mind that acts as a chronicler of her context without shying away from highlighting its most unfair side. If silence prevails, with her powerful voice she destabilizes conformism and generalized indolence, something as necessary as it is scarce, which her audience demands and endorses with their boisterous support and loyalty.
Authenticity and versatility in its purest form, her very personal sound and strong presence make it impossible for the listener to remain indifferent.
Artist: SÉS
SÉS
Invitado de HonorSES es una cantautora de larga trayectoria que constituye todo un icono en el panorama actual gallego. Como clásica ya de la escena musical, su prolífera obra sigue teniendo plena presencia después de trece años de actividad y ocho discos, gracias a su excepcional capacidad artística, a su carisma y fuerza sobre el escenario.
La estética ecléctica que la caracteriza, que combina influencias tradicionales propias con múltiples y diversos estilos de los que se ha ido nutriendo (canción de autora, folclore latinoamericano, rock and roll…) se supedita a la expresividad literaria de las canciones. Sus letras codifican, tanto aspectos vitales de la artista como reflexiones de carácter social y político.
La carga filosófica de su escritura no es ni más ni menos que el reflejo de una personalidad inquieta y mente brillante, que actúa como cronista de su contexto sin huir de evidenciar la cara más injusta de este. Si el silencio impera, con su potente voz desestabiliza el conformismo y la indolencia generalizada, algo tan necesario como escaso, que su público reclama y avala con su numeroso apoyo y fidelidad.
Autenticidad y polivalencia en estado puro, su personalísima sonoridad y fuerte presencia imposibilitan la indiferencia del oyente.
Monday December 02
21:00 to 22:50
Foro FIL, Expo Guadalajara
Literary Program
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Encounter with the strange: vibrations, ghosts, homes and insects
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Encounter with the strange: vibrations, ghosts, homes and insects
The everyday, what we know and call reality, is transformed into a distorted and disturbing landscape in the works of Pilar Adón, Jon Bilbao, Jesús Carrasco and José Ovejero. Their characters coexist with specters, insects and animals; they inhabit phantasmagoric houses and spaces built on both physical and emotional scaffolding. Places that speak of the past through the present to look to the future through characters from different generations who question one another. The four authors will discuss these unexpected encounters and the strange trajectories that take place right at the intersection of the real and the fantastic.
Participants: José Ovejero, Jesús Carrasco, Pilar Adón, Jon Bilbao
Moderator: Marta Fernández
José Ovejero
Invitado de HonorOvejero has published novels, poetry, plays, short stories, essays, and travel books. His works have received numerous awards, including Anagrama for essay (La ética de la crueldad, 2012), Alfaguara for novel (Inventing love, 2013), Setenil for story books (Mundo extraño, 2018) and Juan Gil-Albert for poetry (Mujer lenta, 2018).
Other works by him include the essay Escritores delincuentes and the novels Los ángeles feroces, Insurrección and Humo. In 2023, he won the Premio Dulce Chacón for the best book of the year for Mientras estamos muertos.
He has taught creative writing workshops in various centers and universities in Spain, Latin America and the United States.
His works have been translated into several languages, and his stories have appeared in numerous anthologies both inside and outside Spain.
He runs “El Periscopio,” the culture section of La Marea, and he contributes to various media outlets.
The novel Vibración is his latest work of fiction.
Jesús Carrasco
Invitado de HonorCarrasco was born in Olivenza (Badajoz) in 1972 and currently resides in Seville.
Out in the open (2013, Seix Barral) stands out as one of the most dazzling debuts on the international literary scene, and received the Book of the Year from the Booksellers' Guild of Madrid; the award Premio de Cultura, Arte y Literatura from the Foundation for Rural Studies; the English PEN Award and the Prix Ulysse for the Best First Novel. He was shortlisted for the European Literature Prize in the Netherlands; the Prix Méditerranée Étranger in France and the Dulce Chacón, Quimera, Cálamo and San Clemente awards in Spain.
Selected Book of the Year by El País in 2013 and by The Independent as one of the best translated books in the United Kingdom in 2014, Out in the open has been translated into 29 languages and adapted to film by Benito Zambrano.
His second novel, La tierra que pisamos (2016, Seix Barral), received the European Union Prize for Literature. Llévame a casa (2021, Ax Barral) has gained excellent reviews and is on its fifth edition, with as many translations. It received the Dulce Chacón and Casino de Santiago awards. Elogio de las manos (2024, Seix Barral) received the award Premio Biblioteca Breve in 2024.
Pilar Adón
Invitado de Honor(Madrid, 1971) has received the National Narrative Award, the Critics’ Award, the Francisco Umbral Book of the Year Award and the Cálamo Otra Mirada Award for her novel Of Beasts and Fowls (2024, Open Letter).
She has also published the novels Las efímeras (2015, Galaxia Gutenberg) and Las hijas de Sara (2003, Alianza), as well as the long, illustrated storybook Eterno amor (2021, Páginas de Espuma), and the collections of short stories La vida sumergida (2017, Galaxia Gutenberg), El mes más cruel (2010, Impedimenta), which earned her the FNAC New Talent award, and Viajes inocentes (2005, Páginas de Espuma), for which she won the Ojo Crítico de Narrativa Award.
She has written several books of poetry: Da dolor (2020), Las órdenes (Madrid Booksellers' Guild Book of the Year Award 2018), Mente animal (2014) and La hija del cazador (2011), all published by La Bella Varsovia.
She has translated works by Penelope Fitzgerald, John Fowles, Iris Murdoch, Edith Wharton, and others.
Other activities involving the participant:
Tradition and modernity in the Spanish and Mexican short story
Poetry Room
Jon Bilbao
Invitado de Honor(Ribadesella, 1972) is a mining engineer and has a degree in English Philology. He is the author of the storybooks Como una historia de terror (2008, Salto de Página; Premio Ojo Crítico de Narrativa), Bajo el influjo del cometa (2010, Salto de Página; Premio Tigre Juan and Premio Euskadi de Literatura) and Física familiar (2014, Salto de Página), and of the novels El hermano de las moscas (2008, Salto de Página), Padres, hijos y primates (2011, Salto de Página) and Shakespeare y la ballena blanca (2013, Tusquets).
His stories are collected in anthologies such as Siglo XXI. Los nuevos nombres del cuento español actual (2010, Menoscuarto), Pequeñas resistencias 5. Antología del nuevo cuento español (2001-2010) (2010, Páginas de Espuma) and Cuento español actual (1992-2012) (2014, Cátedra).
With Impedimenta, he has published the story collection Estrómboli (2016) and the novels El silencio y los crujidos (2018), Los extraños (2021), Basilisco (2020, Premio Euskadi de Plata and Premio de las Librerías de Navarra), Araña (2023) and Matamonstruos (2024). The last three titles form an ambitious trilogy that combines the western genre with realistic and autofictional narratives, exploring the mutual influences between fiction and reality.
In the field of graphic novels, he wrote the script for La auditora (2019, Astiberri), a science fiction work that blends dystopian themes with social realism and features illustrations by Javier Peinado.
As a fiction translator, he has translated works by Iris Murdoch, Joseph Conrad, H. P. Lovecraft, and T. C. Boyle, among other authors.
He lives in Bilbao.
Marta Fernández
Invitado de HonorJournalist and writer who studied Journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She began her career at Diario 16 and Televisión Española (TVE). In 1997, she first appeared on camera on Telemadrid. Two years later, she became part of the founding team of CNN+. She remained with the news channel until 2007. That year, she joined Mediaset to take over the midday news program. She stayed with the Italian group until 2016 as a presenter for Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro, programs focused on political current affairs and special reports.
A regular contributor to the cultural magazine Jot Down and GQ, she joined El País in 2017.She later collaborated with Vanity Fair, where she directed and presented the book podcast "Nota al pie."Since 2013, she has participated in La Ventana on Cadena SER, and starting this season, she has her own segment on the program "Academia de saberes inútiles." In recent years, she has realized her dream of interviewing the writers she admires most and lending her voice to audiobooks.
She has published a novel, Te regalaré el mundo, and No te enamores de cobardes, a journey through the myths of cinema and literature. Her latest book is a historical essay on imposture: La mentira, Historia de impostores y engañados. However, the literary activity she dedicates the most energy to is being an advocate for Thomas Pynchon in Spain.
Other activities involving the participant:
Portrait of a time with family
One-way trip from nowhere
The mystery of the imagination that creates (and destroys) worlds
"I'm here for you, no matter what." Friendship
Personal paradises
Speak, wish
Crossroads. Music, poetry and literature
Monday December 02
17:00 to 17:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
With the past at our heels
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
With the past at our heels
How do we digest the injustices left to us by the past? In the books by Edurne Portela and Cristina Sánchez-Andrade, literature is coming to rescue our collective memory. Real people, places and true events provide valuable materials for fiction to showcase the abuses, violence and dark tragedies that pierced the destinies of women and men, anonymous witnesses who were expelled from the historical account written by a social group. The two authors will discuss the powerful role that literature plays in bringing back those who have been unjustly forgotten, and who have a lot to tell us about the present.
Participants: Edurne Portela, Cristina Sánchez-Andrade
Moderator: Jesús Ruiz Mantilla
Edurne Portela
Invitado de HonorPortela has a degree in History (University of Navarre), a PhD in Hispanic Literature (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA) and was a professor of literature at Lehigh University (Pennsylvania) until 2015. There, she combined her teaching work with running the Humanities Center and other management positions. As part of her academic research, she published numerous articles on the representation of political violence in contemporary Spanish and Argentine culture, and the essay Displaced Memories:The Poetics of Trauma in Argentine Women’s Writing.
Since 2016, she has lived in Spain and published with Galaxia Gutenberg El eco de los disparos:Cultura y memoria de la violencia (2016), and the novels Mejor la ausencia (2017, Award in 2018 for best fiction book of the year of the Guild of Bookstores of Madrid and International Literary Award of the City of Cassino, Italy), Formas de estar lejos (2019) and Los ojos cerrados (2021, Euskadi Award for Spanish Literature 2022 and Estado Crítico Award 2022). Her latest novel is Maddi y las fronteras (2023).
In 2017, she produced the documentary Vida y ficción, together with José Ovejero. She has given numerous lectures on matters of memory, history, violence and their representation in literature. In 2021, she curated the conference series “Beyond Auschwitz: exceptional and continued mass violence in 20th-century Europe” for the Koldo Mitxelena center in San Sebastián.
She writes regularly for various newspapers and magazines and collaborates with several Spanish radio stations (Radio Nacional de España, SER, Radio Euskadi). Since 2021, she has worked for Galaxia Gutenberg as an editor, creating her own collection of fiction and non-fiction.
Cristina Sánchez-Andrade
Invitado de HonorWriter, literary critic and translator. She has a degree in Information Sciences and Law, and was born in Santiago de Compostela.
Her works include La nostalgia de la Mujer Anfibio (Anagrama, 2022), the storybook El niño que comía lana (Anagrama, 2019) and Winterlings (Anagrama, 2014), which have been translated into several languages. She has written novels, the stories, essays and poems.
Her awards include the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award (Guadalajara Book Fair, Mexico), the Julio Camba Journalism Award (2019) and the Setenil Award for the best book of stories published in Spain. Her work as a translator includes books such as Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, and the biography on Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser, Why This World.
She currently lives in Madrid, where she combines her work as a novelist with university teaching and with collaborations in various media outlets, including La Voz de Galicia and El País.
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:
Once upon a time was love
The labyrinth of intrigue
Crossroads. Humor, illustration and literature
Monday December 02
18:00 to 18:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Portrait of a time with family
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Portrait of a time with family
The family, its secrets, successive generations, relationships of love and heartbreak, truncated lives, a multisided universe that, in the works of the guest authors, transcends the first plane of a singular narrative to paint a portrait of the ups and downs of an entire era. Fernando Aramburu, Sergio del Molino, Emiliano Monge and Aroa Moreno will talk about stories of family sagas as fiction material, stories set in times of social and cultural uncertainties, between bliss and misery, stories of women and men whose destinies were marked by remarkable historical events.
Participants: Fernando Aramburu, Aroa Moreno Durán, Emiliano Monge, Sergio del Molino
Moderator: Marta Fernández
Fernando Aramburu
Invitado de Honor(San Sebastián, 1959) is the author of the storybooks Los peces de la amargura (2006, 11th Mario Vargas Llosa NH Award, 4th Dulce Chacón Award and the 2008 Spanish Royal Academy Award) and El vigilante del fiordo (2011); of the non-fiction works Las letras entornadas (2015), Autorretrato sin mí (2018), Vetas profundas (2019) and Utilidad de las desgracias (2020), as well as of the novels Fuegos con limón (1996), Los ojos vacíos (2000, Euskadi Award), El trompetista del Utopía (2003), Bami sin sombra (2005), Viaje con Clara por Alemania (2010), Años lentos (2012, 7th Tusquets Editores de Novela, and Premio de los Libreros de Madrid awards), La gran Marivián (2013), Ávidas pretensiones (2014, Premio Biblioteca Breve award) and Homeland (2016, Premio Nacional de Narrativa, Premio de la Crítica, Premio Euskadi, Premio Francisco Umbral, Premio Dulce Chacón, Premio San Clemente, Premio Strega Europeo, Premio Lampedusa, and Premio Atenas awards), translated into 35 languages and turned into a renowned series.
After this, he published Los vencejos (2021) and, as part of the series “Gentes vascas”, Hijos de la fábula (2023) and El niño (2024), confirming him as one of the great European writers. His complete poetry has been collected in Sinfonía corporal (2023).
Other activities involving the participant:
Opening of the Carlos Fuentes Literary Lounge
Aroa Moreno Durán
Invitado de Honor(Badajoz, 1981) studied Journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
In 2017, she published her first novel, La hija del comunista (Caballo de Troya; 2023, Random House; winner of the Ojo Crítico Award for novel of the year in 2017 and, to date, translated into seven languages), and in 2022, La bajamar (Random House; Grand Continent Award and nominated for the 2023 Vargas Llosa Novel Biennial Award, translated into four languages).
She has also published the books of poems Veinte años sin lápices nuevos (2009, Student) and Jet lag (2016, Baile del Sol). Almudena. Una biografía was published in 2024 by the Lumen publishing house and illustrated by Ana Jarén.
Other activities involving the participant:
Meetings (and misunderstandings). Challenges of recent Spanish narrative
Emiliano Monge
Emiliano Monge (Mexico, 1978) is a writer and political scientist. He has published the novels Morirse de memoria, Arid sky (XXVIII Premio Jaén de Novela and V Premio Otras Voces, Otros Ámbitos), Las tierras arrasadas ((IX Premio Iberoamericano de Novela Elena Poniatowska y English Pen Award), No contar todo (Premio Bellas Artes de Narrativa a Obra Publicada), Tejer la oscuridad, Justo antes del final, and, most recently, Los vivos, as well as the short story collections Arrastrar esa sombra and La superficie más honda, in addition to the children's book Los insectos invisibles. His work has been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish, Greek, Chinese and Swedish.
His work has been recognized by the Hay Festival, the British Council, the Dublin Book Fair, the Guadalajara International Book Fair, the Conaculta, the Bogotá International Book Fair, the PEN Foundation and the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, where he is currently a fellow. He is a member of Mexico's National System of Art Creators, a consulting director of Centroamérica Cuenta, and a columnist for the newspaper El País.
Sergio del Molino
Invitado de Honor(Madrid, 1979) won the Alfaguara Award 2024 for his novel Los alemanes, a book in which he addresses the burden that inheritance and the past place on us. He is also the author of two crucial narrative essays on depopulation and “the idea of country”: La España vacía (2016; 2022, Alfaguara), with which he won the Prize for best non-fiction work from the Gremio de Libreros and the Cálamo Award, in addition to being included in the “best of the year” lists of the cultural press; and Contra la España vacía (2021, Alfaguara). Before, he had won the awards Ojo Crítico and Juan Tigre with La hora violeta (2013), and then the Espasa Award for Lugares fuera de sitio (2018).
He is also the author of the novels Lo que a nadie le importa (2014) and La mirada de los peces (2017), and of the brief biographical essay Calomarde.El hijo bastardo de las luces (2020), of a novelized autobiography about his relationship with disease, Skin (Alfaguara, 2020), and Un tal González (2022, Alfaguara).
He is a columnist for the newspaper El País and a collaborator of Onda Cero Radio, among other media outlets. His works have appeared in English, Italian, French, Greek, German, Chinese, and other languages, in more than 15 countries.
Marta Fernández
Invitado de HonorJournalist and writer who studied Journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She began her career at Diario 16 and Televisión Española (TVE). In 1997, she first appeared on camera on Telemadrid. Two years later, she became part of the founding team of CNN+. She remained with the news channel until 2007. That year, she joined Mediaset to take over the midday news program. She stayed with the Italian group until 2016 as a presenter for Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro, programs focused on political current affairs and special reports.
A regular contributor to the cultural magazine Jot Down and GQ, she joined El País in 2017.She later collaborated with Vanity Fair, where she directed and presented the book podcast "Nota al pie."Since 2013, she has participated in La Ventana on Cadena SER, and starting this season, she has her own segment on the program "Academia de saberes inútiles." In recent years, she has realized her dream of interviewing the writers she admires most and lending her voice to audiobooks.
She has published a novel, Te regalaré el mundo, and No te enamores de cobardes, a journey through the myths of cinema and literature. Her latest book is a historical essay on imposture: La mentira, Historia de impostores y engañados. However, the literary activity she dedicates the most energy to is being an advocate for Thomas Pynchon in Spain.
Other activities involving the participant:
Encounter with the strange: vibrations, ghosts, homes and insects
One-way trip from nowhere
The mystery of the imagination that creates (and destroys) worlds
"I'm here for you, no matter what." Friendship
Personal paradises
Speak, wish
Crossroads. Music, poetry and literature
Monday December 02
19:00 to 19:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Writing goodbye
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Writing goodbye
Two authors discuss the literature of the farewell. How they, at crucial times in their lives, faced having to write a farewell. Novelist Luis Mateo Díez and poet Luis García Montero will talk about how prose and poetry can express the pain, emptiness and helplessness that death brings with it, and how literature stands to safeguard the intimate and collective memory of those who have gone before us. Theirs is a farewell that paradoxically reminds us that others live in us long after they are gone.
Participants: Luis Mateo Díez, Luis García Montero
Moderator: María José Gálvez
Luis Mateo Díez
Invitado de Honor(Villablino, León, 1942) is a writer and member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) since his election in 2000. He co-founded the poetry magazine Claraboya and, in 1972, his poetry book Señales de humo was published.
His published novels include: Apócrifo del clavel y la espina (1974 Café Gijón Award), La fuente de la edad (1986, Premio Nacional de Narrativa and Premio de la Crítica awards), Las horas completas (1990), La ruina del cielo. Un obituario (1999, Premio Nacional de Narrativa and Premio de la Crítica awards), Los frutos de la niebla (2008, Premio de la Crítica de Castilla y León award) and El amo de la pista (2024). El reino de Celama (2003) brings together his three novels set in this imaginary land, and in Fábulas del sentimiento (2013), he grouped the four short volumes of novels from that narrative cycle.
His short stories include: Relato de Babia (1981), El árbol de los cuentos. Cuentos reunidos (1973-2004) (2006), La cabeza en llamas (2012, Francisco Umbral Award), Celama (un recuento) (2022) and El limbo de los cines (2023, with illustrations by Emilio Urberuaga).
His books of non-fiction and diverse genres include El porvenir de la ficción (1992), La mano del sueño (Algunas consideraciones sobre el arte narrativo, la imaginación y la memoria) (Induction speech into the RAE, given on May 20, 2001), Orillas de la ficción (2010) and Los desayunos del Café Borenes (2015).
In addition to those already mentioned, he has received the Premio Castilla y León de las Letras and the Premio de Literatura de la Comunidad de Madrid awards. In 2020, he received the award Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas, and in 2023, the Cervantes Award.
Other activities involving the participant:
Tradition and modernity in the Spanish and Mexican short story
Bibliodiversity, reading and critical thinking. A meeting with Lorenzo Silva
Luis García Montero
Invitado de Honor(Granada, 1958) has been the director of the Instituto Cervantes since 2018. He is a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Granada.
The awards he has received include: Premio Adonáis (1982), Premio Nacional de Literatura (1994), Premio Nacional de la Crítica (2003), Premio del Gremio de Libreros de Madrid (2009), Premio Poetas del Mundo Latino (2010, México), Premio Paralelo 0 (2018, Ecuador), Golden Antelope International Poetry Prize (2021, China) and Premio Montale Fuori di Casa (2023, Italy).
His poetry books include Y ahora ya eres dueño del Puente de Brooklyn (1980), El jardín extranjero (1983), Habitaciones separadas (1980), Completamente viernes (1998), La intimidad de la serpiente (2003), Vista cansada (2008), A puerta cerrada (2017), No puedes ser así. Breve historia del mundo (2021), Un año y tres meses (2022) and Almudena (2024).
In non-fiction, he has published ¿Por qué no es útil la literatura? (1993, in collaboration with Antonio Muñoz Molina), Un lector llamado Federico García Lorca (2016), Las palabras rotas (2019) and La realidad de una esperanza. Galdós, la memoria y la poesía (2020), and critical editions of García Lorca (1992 y 2017), Alberti (1988), Carlos Barral (1997) and Luis Rosales (2005).
He is the author of the novels Impares, fila 13 (written with Felipe Benítez Reyes); Mañana no será lo que Dios quiera (2009), a novelized biography of Ángel González; No me cuentes tu vida (2012) and Someone speaks your name (2014).
He has studied the work of authors such as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rosalía de Castro, Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, Luis Rosales, Rubén Bonifaz Nuño, Francisco Ayala and José Emilio Pacheco. He also has honorary degrees from the universities of San Agustín and Ricardo Palma (Peru), Pontificia Católica Universidad de Valparaíso (Chile) and Córdoba (Argentina), and is an honorary professor at the University of Mar del Plata (Argentina).
He recently received the Premio Internacional Carlos Fuentes a la Creación Literaria (2024) in the Spanish Language, awarded by the Secretariat of Culture and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Other activities involving the participant:
"Cry to Rome", a poem by Federico García Lorca. Published in native languages
Journeys. Mexico: memory of hospitality
Spanish in the world
María José Gálvez
Invitado de Honor(Valencia, 1975) She is currently the general director of Books, Comics, and Reading at the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Government of Spain, where she has the following duties: develop and implement plans, programs, and actions to promote and disseminate literary creation and translation, with specific measures for the comic medium; enhance the development of the publishing industry and the preservation of bibliodiversity and linguistic plurality; and foster the promotion of reading in all areas, particularly through library coordination, contributing to the balanced and innovative development of libraries in their public role.
Among other roles, she is a member of the boards of the National Library of Spain, the Max Aub Foundation, the Francisco Brines Foundation, and the María Zambrano Foundation. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Cervantes Institute.
She has a PhD in Law from the Universidad de Valencia (with predoctoral research stays at Harvard University, the University of Pisa, and the Free University of Brussels), and she is an expert in Constitutional Law, having completed a specialization course at the Center for Political and Constitutional Studies in Madrid. She has been an associate professor of Constitutional Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and a tutor-professor at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).
She was the editorial director of Tirant lo Blanch Publishing for several years, and also coordinated the editorial production of the Tirant group in various Spanish-speaking countries.
In the institutional field, she served as deputy director of the Office of the President of the Congress of Deputies and as an advisor in various offices of the First Vice Presidency of the Government.
Other activities involving the participant:
Opening Ceremony
Reading is a right!
One hundred years of modern publishing in Galicia
Monday December 02
20:00 to 20:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Once upon a time was love
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Once upon a time was love
"Everything you love probably will be lost, but in the end love will return in some other way," wrote Franz Kafka. Words that could well be heard in the background during this conversation, which will revolve around creation and the topic of love, the latter being viewed from a broad perspective, far removed from the stereotypes that characterize conventional romantic literature. Karmele Jaio, Raquel Lanseros and Jordi Soler will address these complex and intimate relationships, which mark the spot on a map as explored by prose as by poetry. Three perspectives that range from the loss of loved one, to epic and tragic tales, to questioning the ways of loving imposed by society with its many "sentimental miseries."
Participants: Karmele Jaio, Raquel Lanseros, Jordi Soler
Moderator: Jesús Ruiz Mantilla
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
Tuesday December 03
17:00 to 17:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
One-way trip from nowhere
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
One-way trip from nowhere
In the most recent novels by Najat El Hachmi, Brenda Navarro and Patricio Pron, there are characters who travel, leave and return. But they all end up discovering that leaving does not let them escape the unbearable, nor does returning help them reconcile with who they were. The books by the three authors are, to varying degrees, "outside" and "far" from their starting point, because theirs is not a conventional journey, but one of leaving and returning to their country of origin, their gender and class.
Participants: Najat El Hachmi, Brenda Navarro, Patricio Pron
Moderator: Marta Fernández
Najat El Hachmi
Invitado de HonorNajat El Hachmi was born in Nador (Morocco) in 1979 and moved to Spain when she was eight years old. She has a degree in Arab Studies from the University of Barcelona.
Among her published works, one should mention her novels L’últim patriarca (Planeta, 2008), a debut that won the Ramon Llull Prize and the Prix Ulysse, La filla estrangera (Edicions 62- Destino, 2015 – winner of the Sant Joan Novel Award and the Barcelona City Award) and Mare de llet i de mel, (Edicions 62, 2018). All of them have been widely translated.
After the publication on the celebrated Feminist essay, Sempre han parlat per nosaltres (Edicions 62-Destino, 2019), her latest published work is the novel Dilluns ens estimaran (Edicions 62, Destino, 2021) that received the prestigious Nadal Novel Award 2021.
Other activities involving the participant:
The Pleasure of Reading Gala
Brenda Navarro
She was part of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 2023. Her debut novel, Casas vacías (2018), won the Premio Tigre Juan and the Pen Translation Award in the United Kingdom. Her second novel, Ceniza en la boca (2022), received the Premio Cálamo, the Premio de la Asociación de Librerías de Madrid, the Premio Todos tus Libros, and the Premio San Clemente as the best book of 2022, in addition to being a finalist at the Bienal Vargas Llosa 2022.
She has worked as an editor and screenwriter and teaches creative writing workshops both nationally and internationally, including at the City University of New York (CUNY), New York University (NYU), the University of Iowa (UI), and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has been invited to give lectures at Harvard, Brown, Wesleyan, Iowa, and New York universities. Additionally, she has contributed to media outlets such as El País, Pikara Magazine, La Marea, El Salto, Milenio, Tierra Adentro, among others.
In 2021, she served as the General Coordinator for the diploma course Encuentros y Desencuentros de la lengua española y de las literaturas hispánicas, organized by the Cátedra Extraordinaria Carlos Fuentes de Literatura Hispanoamericana and the Centro de Estudios Mexicanos en España (CEM-España). This course brought together over two dozen Ibero-American speakers to discuss Spanish-language literature. She also coordinated the project “No hay lugar en este país” (2021) with the Centro de Análisis e Investigación Fundar México, which included a literary workshop that resulted in the publication of a book in 2022.
Other activities involving the participant:
A one-way ticket
Inaugural Talk: The Recovery of the Lost Home… That Perhaps We Don’t Want to Recover
Patricio Pron
Invitado de HonorPron is the author of six books of stories, including El mundo sin las personas que lo afean y lo arruinan (2010), La vida interior de las plantas de interior (2013), Lo que está y no se usa nos fulminará (2018) y Trayéndolo todo de regreso a casa (2021); and of seven novels, including El comienzo de la primavera (2008), My fathers' ghost is climbing in the rain (2011), Nosotros caminamos en sueños (2014), Don't shed your tears for anyone who lives on these streets (2016) y Mañana tendremos otros nombres (2019), as well as the essays El libro tachado: prácticas de la negación y del silencio en la crisis de la literatura (2014) and No, no pienses en un conejo blanco: literatura, dinero, tiempo, influencia, falsificación, crítica, futuro (2022), and of the dream diary Traumbuch (2022).
His work has been recognized on numerous occasions (including with the Juan Rulfo, Cálamo and Alfaguara awards), regularly included in anthologies and translated into 12 languages; these include German, English, French, Norwegian, Dutch, Chinese, Italian and Portuguese. In 2010, the English magazine Granta selected him as one of the 22 best writers in Spanish of his generation. More recently, he was the Director's Guest at the Civitella Ranieri residence for artists, and a guest lecturer at the Literature Department of the University of Cologne.
Pron has a PhD in Romance Philology from Georg-August University in Göttingen. He lives in Madrid with his wife and two cats. In 2023, he published La naturaleza secreta de las cosas de este mundo with the Anagram publishing house.
Other activities involving the participant:
New masculinities: deconstructing to build better men?
The man who defeated artificial intelligence
Marta Fernández
Invitado de HonorJournalist and writer who studied Journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She began her career at Diario 16 and Televisión Española (TVE). In 1997, she first appeared on camera on Telemadrid. Two years later, she became part of the founding team of CNN+. She remained with the news channel until 2007. That year, she joined Mediaset to take over the midday news program. She stayed with the Italian group until 2016 as a presenter for Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro, programs focused on political current affairs and special reports.
A regular contributor to the cultural magazine Jot Down and GQ, she joined El País in 2017.She later collaborated with Vanity Fair, where she directed and presented the book podcast "Nota al pie."Since 2013, she has participated in La Ventana on Cadena SER, and starting this season, she has her own segment on the program "Academia de saberes inútiles." In recent years, she has realized her dream of interviewing the writers she admires most and lending her voice to audiobooks.
She has published a novel, Te regalaré el mundo, and No te enamores de cobardes, a journey through the myths of cinema and literature. Her latest book is a historical essay on imposture: La mentira, Historia de impostores y engañados. However, the literary activity she dedicates the most energy to is being an advocate for Thomas Pynchon in Spain.
Other activities involving the participant:
Encounter with the strange: vibrations, ghosts, homes and insects
Portrait of a time with family
The mystery of the imagination that creates (and destroys) worlds
"I'm here for you, no matter what." Friendship
Personal paradises
Speak, wish
Crossroads. Music, poetry and literature
Tuesday December 03
18:00 to 18:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
The need to "lose one's way." Madness and creativity
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
The need to "lose one's way." Madness and creativity
The "perfect storm" occurs when several elements that, separately, don't pose any risk, come together and combine to produce an inevitable catastrophe. If the phenomenon occurs in the field of literary creativity, such a tragedy will be transformed into a book. Writer Rosa Montero and neurologist Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez will discuss what happens when that "perfect storm" is unleashed inside a writer at just the right time in their life, when the imagination, interspersed with madness and melancholy, loses its way, severs all rational connections and sets off in search of other possible realities.
Participants: Rosa Montero, Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez
Moderator: Claudia Neira Bermúdez
Rosa Montero
Invitado de HonorShe was born in Madrid and studied Journalism and Psychology. Since 1977, she has been working exclusively for the newspaper El País.
In 1978, she won the award Premio Mundo de Entrevistas, in 1980 the award Premio Nacional de Periodismo for literary articles and articles, in 2005 the award Premio de la Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid for lifetime achievement, and in 2014 the award Premio Internacional Columnistas del Mundo 2014.
Se has published the novels: Absent love: a chronicle (1979), Delta Function (1981), Te trataré como a una reina (1983), Amado Amo (1988), Temblor (1990), Beautiful and Dark (1993), La hija del caníbal (1997), El corazón del Tártaro (2001), La loca de la casa (2003), Historia del Rey Transparente (2005), Instrucciones para salvar el mundo (2008), Tears in Rain (2011), La ridícula idea de no volver a verte (2013), Weight of the Heart (2015), La carne (2016), Los tiempos del odio (2018), La buena suerte (2020), El peligro de estar cuerda (2022) and La desconocida, short story with Olivier Truc (2023).
She has also published the book of short stories Amantes y enemigos; two biographical essays, Historias de mujeres and Pasiones, as well as stories for children and compilations of interviews and articles, the last of which is Cuentos verdaderos (2024).
Her work has been translated into more than 25 languages.
She has an honorary doctorate from the University of Puerto Rico, is an honorary member of the University of Málaga (Spain) and in 2018 she was named Honorary Professor of the Academic Department of Humanities at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
In 2017, she received the award Premio Nacional de las Letras, and in 2022 the Medalla de Oro al Mérito de las Bellas Artes.
Other activities involving the participant:
Opening of the Carlos Fuentes Literary Lounge
Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez
He is a physician specializing in psychiatry and neuropsychiatry at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery (INNN) in Mexico, where he directs the neuropsychiatry and cognitive neurology program. He has a PhD in Science from UNAM and is a professor of Scientific Methodology. He is a member of the National Research System of the National Council of Science and Technology.
He has published over 100 scientific papers in the field of clinical neurosciences. He has received awards in Australia (2006, International Neuropsychiatric Association), the United States (2011, International Conference on Bipolar Disorders) and the United Kingdom (2024, JNNP Lecture, British Neuropsychiatric Association). He published the treatise Principios de neuropsiquiatría (2019) and the text book Imágenes en neuropsiquiatría: lecciones de neurociencia clínica (2022).
He has also done extensive work in the field of scientific dissemination, literature and the cultural sphere. He is the author of the novel Paramnesia (2006, Penguin Random House) and the books Breve diccionario clínico del alma (2010, Penguin Random House), Un diccionario sin palabras (2016, Almadia), Depresión: la noche más oscura (2020, Penguin Random House) and La melancolía creativa (2022, Penguin Random House), which explore the boundaries between medical fiction, literary creativity and scientific essay.
In 2009, he won the Premio Nacional de Ensayo Literario from the Instituto de Bellas Artes de México.
Other activities involving the participant:
Mental health in the virtual world
Claudia Neira Bermúdez
(Nicaragua) She has been the director of the Centroamérica Cuenta Festival since 2015, where she also coordinates content curation. She combines her cultural management work with her experience in strategic communication and public relations.
Previously, she worked as an editor in media outlets in Nicaragua and as a communication expert in the United States and Nicaragua, where she founded Crea Comunicaciones in 2005. She has a Master's in Strategic Communication and Public Relations from Marshall University in West Virginia, United States. She is a fellow of the fifth class of the Central American Leadership Initiative (CALI), affiliated with the Aspen Institute. She has been a mentor with Vital Voices and has participated in various cultural, business, and leadership initiatives in Central America.
She is a Nicaraguan born in Brazil of a Peruvian father and Nicaraguan mother. She has lived in Madrid since 2022.
Other activities involving the participant:
Jazzing in Turtle Island: A Tribute to Darrel J. McLeod
Latin America Viva
Tuesday December 03
19:00 to 19:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
The mystery of the imagination that creates (and destroys) worlds
Spain, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
The mystery of the imagination that creates (and destroys) worlds
In recent times, the power of imagination is seemingly being questioned by a hyperreality that tries to replace it. And yet, imaginative writing continues to open spaces of freedom, invented worlds that deserve to be discovered, based on each reader's motivations, whether as places of enjoyment or as spaces in which to reflect and learn. While it is true that the writer feeds on internal and external realities during the creative phase, it is also true that the final result depends solely on their imaginative talent. This will all be discussed by Sergio Ramírez, Ana Merino and Jorge Volpi.
Participants: Jorge Volpi, Ana Merino, Sergio Ramírez
Moderator: Marta Fernández
Jorge Volpi
(Mexico, 1968) is the author of 15 novels, including In spite of the dark silence (1993); the 20th-century trilogy consisting of In search of Klingsor (1999, Biblioteca Breve Award), El fin de la locura (2003) and Season of ash (2006); La tejedora de sombras (2011, Planeta-America Award); Oscuro bosque oscuro (2010); Memorial del engaño (2013); Las elegidas (2014); Una novela criminal (2018, Alfaguara Prize), which led to the Netflix documentary series of the same name, and Partes de guerra (2022).
He has also written the essays La imaginación y el poder (1998), La guerra y las palabras (2004), Mentiras contagiosas (2008, Mazatlán Award), El insomnio de Bolívar (2009, Debate-Casa de América Award), Leer la mente (2011) and Examen de mi padre (2016), and the play Las agujas dementes (2020). His most recent book is the book of stories Enrabiados (2023).
In October, Alfaguara will publish the essay La invención de todas las cosas, a history of fiction.
In 2008, he received the José Donoso Award for all his work, and the Medal of the Orden de Isabel la Católica de España. He is a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France. His books have been translated into 30 languages.
Other activities involving the participant:
One Thousand Young People with Jorge Volpi
Ana Merino
Invitado de HonorShe is a writer. She leads the Planeta Chair of Literature and Society at the International University of Valencia-VIU. She has taught Creative Writing and Cultural Studies at the University of Iowa, where in 2011 she founded the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing in Spanish, which she ran until 2018.
Winner of the Nadal Award 2020 for the novel El mapa de los afectos (Destino, 2020), she has also published the novel Amigo (Destino, 2022) and eight poetry books: Preparativos para un viaje (Rialp, 1995, Adonais Award, 2nd ed. Reino de Cordelia), Los días gemelos (Visor, 1997), La voz de los relojes (Visor, 2000), Child's play (Visor, 2003, Fray Luis de León Award), Cell mate (Visor, 2006), Curación (Visor, 2010), Los buenos propósitos (Visor, 2015), Salvamento de hormigas (Visor, 2022) and the anthology Los pasos de la cordura (Reino de Cordelia, 2023).
She has written two children's poetry books, Hagamos caso al tigre (Anaya, 2010) and El viaje del vikingo soñador (Santillana, 2015); the young adult novels El hombre de los dos corazos (Anaya, 2009) and Planeta Lasvi (Siruela, 2024); the plays Amor:muy frágil (Reino de Cordelia, 2013), Las decepciones (Literal/Conaculta, 2014), La redención (Reino de Cordelia, 2016), and the children's play Salvemos al elefante (Santillana, 2017).
She has written numerous articles on comics and graphic novels. She is the author of two non-fiction works, El cómic hispánico (Cátedra, 2003) and Diez ensayos para pensar el cómic (Eolas/Universidad de León, 2017).
She was a member of the executive committee of the International Comic Art Forum (ICAF) (2001-2011), the founding executive committee of the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) (2004-2014), and of Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature (2013-2018). She co-directed the University of Iowa Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Racial Reckoning through Comics” (2022-2023), and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Riverside Theater in Iowa (2019-2023).
Sergio Ramírez
(Masatepe, Nicaragua, 1942) graduated with a degree in Law in 1964. He founded the Ventana magazine in 1960, and led the literary movement of the same name. He was elected General Secretary of the Confederation of Central American Universities (CSUCA), based in Costa Rica, twice, in 1968 and in 1976. In 1968, he founded Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana (EDUCA). He founded the Nueva Nicaragua publishing house in 1981. Stripped of his Nicaraguan nationality in 2023, he lives in exile in Madrid. He is the chairman of the editorial board of the magazine Carátula, which he founded in 2006, and of the Festival Literario Centroamericana Cuenta, which he founded in 2012.
He has written more than sixty books, including novels, stories and essays, including: De tropeles y tropelías (1971, Premio Latinoamericano de Cuento of the magazine Imagen); ¿Te dio miedo la sangre? (1978, finalist of the Premio Latinoamericano Rómulo Gallegos, 1979); Castigo divino (1988, Dashiell Hammett Prize 1990); Un baile de máscaras (1995, 1998 Laure Bataillon Prize for best foreign book translated in France); Margarita, está linda la mar (1998, Premio Internacional de Novela Alfaguara 1998); La fugitiva (2011, International Metrópolis Bleu Festival Prize, Montreal). His cycle of noire novels is made up of El cielo llora por mí (2008), Ya nadie llora por mí (2017) and Tongolele no sabía bailar (2022). His latest storybook is Ese día cayó en domingo (2022) and his latest novel is El caballo dorado (Alfaguara, 2024). His books have been translated into twenty languages.
The awards he has received include Premio Iberoamericano de Letras José Donoso, 2011; Premio Carlos Fuentes a la Creación Literaria en Idioma Español, 2014; Premio Miguel de Cervantes, 2017; the Gold Medal of the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid, 2021; the Premio del Festival Ñ, 2023, and the Premio del Festival Escribidores, 2024.
Other activities involving the participant:
Two-way journeys of literary agents And a tribute to Antonia Kerrigan
Marta Fernández
Invitado de HonorJournalist and writer who studied Journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She began her career at Diario 16 and Televisión Española (TVE). In 1997, she first appeared on camera on Telemadrid. Two years later, she became part of the founding team of CNN+. She remained with the news channel until 2007. That year, she joined Mediaset to take over the midday news program. She stayed with the Italian group until 2016 as a presenter for Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro, programs focused on political current affairs and special reports.
A regular contributor to the cultural magazine Jot Down and GQ, she joined El País in 2017.She later collaborated with Vanity Fair, where she directed and presented the book podcast "Nota al pie."Since 2013, she has participated in La Ventana on Cadena SER, and starting this season, she has her own segment on the program "Academia de saberes inútiles." In recent years, she has realized her dream of interviewing the writers she admires most and lending her voice to audiobooks.
She has published a novel, Te regalaré el mundo, and No te enamores de cobardes, a journey through the myths of cinema and literature. Her latest book is a historical essay on imposture: La mentira, Historia de impostores y engañados. However, the literary activity she dedicates the most energy to is being an advocate for Thomas Pynchon in Spain.
Other activities involving the participant:
Encounter with the strange: vibrations, ghosts, homes and insects
Portrait of a time with family
One-way trip from nowhere
"I'm here for you, no matter what." Friendship
Personal paradises
Speak, wish
Crossroads. Music, poetry and literature
Tuesday December 03
20:00 to 20:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara
FIL Forum Shows
Free entrance
Spain, Guest of Honor
FIL Forum Shows
Javier Ruibal-Saturno Cabaret
Javier Ruibal-Saturno Cabaret
Spain, 1950’s. With the arrival of a certain economic improvement thanks to the agreements between the Franco regime and the United States, a lukewarm and fearful scent of freedom arrives in Spain. The Saturno is a cabaret set in the Barcelona of the time, where the American Sixth Fleet disembarked alongside bourgeois and roughneck scoundrels, all of whom rubbed shoulders with visual and cinematographic artists who gave back the city the cosmopolitanism it had lost with the coup d'état, the civil war and the subsequent and very long reprisal.
And in this —seeming— space of Freedom, the show "Saturno Cabaret" takes place. Conceived, composed and written by Javier Ruibal, it is a portrait of the time through a gallery of characters treated with the humor and the tenderness essential to make this show a mirror in which to look at what we were and how we were able to emerge dignified, though not unscathed, from that time of opprobrium and repression.
This creative musician, different from all those of his culture and generation, boasts a 35-plus-year career. Composer, arranger, guitarist and singer. Self-taught and unorthodox. Frontier musician. He has been a professional musician since 1978, giving numerous concerts both in Spain and in other countries. Due to the particularity of his creation and its plural forms, he is invited to perform in different kinds of festivals such as jazz festivals, world music...
Bordering on flamenco, he always let himself be involved and fascinated by it, but taking the precaution of not passing himself off as what he always wanted to make clear he was not: a flamenco artist, not for lack of affection but out of absolute respect for it. However, a good part of the contemporary flamenco music is directly influenced by this artist who has been discovered as a true innovator of musical and poetic language.
He has composed for other artists such as Martirio, Ana Belén, Pasión Vega, Javier Krahe, and Mónica Molina, and he has participated in several recordings of Pablo Milanés, Joaquín Sabina, Celtas Cortos, Martirio, Carmen París, and others.
Javier Ruibal was awarded the National Prize of Current Music of the Ministry of Culture of Spain in 2017, has won the Goya Award for Best Original Song in 2020, was granted the Gold Medal of Andalusia and named Academician of Fine Arts of Cadiz in 2024.
Artist: Javier Ruibal
Javier Ruibal
Invitado de HonorJavier Ruibal es premio nacional de Músicas Actuales del Ministerio de Cultura de España 2017, ganador del Premio Goya a Mejor Canción Original 2020, Medalla de Oro de Andalucía y Académico de Bellas Artes de Cádiz.
Tuesday December 03
21:00 to 22:50
Foro FIL, Expo Guadalajara