Marta Breen

(Norway, 1976) 

Non-fiction writer and journalist. Her work focuses, above all, on women's history and feminism.
She made her literary debut in 2006, with a book focused on women and the challenges they face in the music industry. In 2014, she published the book Født Feminist (Born a feminist) and the best-selling work 60 damer du skulle ha møtt (60 women you should have heard about) in collaboration with illustrator Jenny Jordahl. The two also collaborated on the book F-ordet (With F for…), which won the Best Youth Textbook Award from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture.
The collaboration with Jordahl continued in her following works. In 2018 she presented Kvinner i kamp. 150 års kamp for frihet, likhet, søsterskap, which was translated into Spanish and was published that same year with RBA under the title Mujeres en lucha: 150 años de reivindicación feminista (Women in Battle). In this work, Breen and Jordahl show us, through the many battles won by the feminist movement, that the world for women is now a better place than it was 150 years ago, and that there is still a long way to go, and many battles to fight.
In 2019 she published the collection of essays Om muser og menn (Of Muses and Men) and in 2020 a book focusing on feminism, Hvordan bli (in skandinavisk) feminist. 20 veier til mer likestilling på jobben, i livet og i kjærligheten (How To Be a Scandinavian Feminist). 
From 2013 to 2018, Breen has preceded the Association of Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators. 

Other activities involving the participant:

Echoes of FIL

Lina Meruane

Su obra de ficción incluye los relatos reunidos en Las infantas, y cinco novelas –Póstuma, Cercada, Fruta podrida, Sangre en el ojo y Sistema nervioso– traducidas a doce lenguas. Entre sus libros de no ficción se cuentan los ensayos Viajes virales y Zona ciega, así como el ensayo personal Palestina en pedazos (versión ampliada de su anterior Volverse Palestina), el ensayo lírico Palestina, por ejemplo, y la diatriba Contra los hijos. Ensayo general, en tanto, reúne sus textos ensayísticos más breves. Ha incursionado en la dramaturgia con una adaptación teatral, Un lugar donde caerse muerta y una obra dramática: Esa cosa animal. Ha recibido los premios Metropolis Azul (Canadá 2023), Cálamo (España 2016), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (México 2012), Anna Seghers (Berlín 2011) y becas de escritura de la Fundación Guggenheim (USA 2004), la NEA (USA 2010), la DAAD (Alemania 2017) y Casa Cien Años de Soledad (México 2021), entre otros. Enseña escritura creativa en la Universidad de Nueva York (USA).

Arantxa Urretabizkaia

(Spain, 1947)

Arantxa Urretabizkaia Bejarano has a History degree and works as a journalist in different media: written press, radio and television.
Her literary career has been developed for more than 50 years mainly in Basque. She has published poetry and essays, but most of her literary work focuses on narrative.
Some of her books have been translated into several languages: Spanish, English, German, Italian, Russian. The titles translate into Spanish are: ¿Por qué Panpox? (Ediciones del Mall, 1986), Saturno (Alfaguara, 1989), The red notebook (Center for Basque Studies Press, 2018), Las 3 Marías (Erein, 2011), Lecciones del Camino (Pamiela, 2018). The original in Basque of La última casa (consonni, 2024), titled Azken etxea, was published by Pamiela in 2022, and in the same year it won the Euskadi Prize for Literature in Basque.
She is a member of the Academy of the Basque Language, Euskaltzaindia.

Silvana Paternostro

Nació y vivió en Barranquilla, Colombia, hasta los quince años cuando se fue a estudiar a los Estados Unidos. Allí se hizo periodista, escribiendo en inglés y concentrándose en temas latinoamericanos. Obtuvo el Premio Paul Taylor/Dorothy Lange por sus reportajes sobre Cuba en los años noventa. La revista TIME la nombró líder latinoamericana por su voz innovadora.
 
Su primer libro, En la tierra de Dios y del hombre: Confrontando nuestra cultura sexual, publicado en inglés en 1997, fue seleccionado para el Premio PEN/Martha Albrand. En 2023, Planeta Colombia (Tusquets) publicó una nueva edición ahora titulada En la tierra de Dios y del hombre: Crónicas de una latinoamerica machista. 

También es autora de Mi guerra con Colombia: un recorrido por el país que dejé atrás, publicado en 2007: una mezcla de memorias y reportajes característica de su trabajo; así como de Soledad y compañía, una biografía oral sobre Gabriel García Márquez,  que ha sido traducida al inglés, chino, portugués, polaco, ruso y serbio.

Sus textos han aparecido en The New York Times, The Paris Review, Financial Times, The New York Review of Books y Vogue, entre otras publicaciones.  Es productora asociada de The Argentine y Guerrilla de Stephen Soderbergh con Benicio del Toro.

A la Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara (FIL) llega con una nueva edición ampliada de Soledad & Compañía: La vida de Gabriel García Márquez contada con la ayuda de amigos, familiares, admiradores, adversarios, compinches, mamadores de gallo, borrachos y unas cuantas personas de bien, recién publicada por Planeta.
 

Other activities involving the participant:

Gabriel García Márquez: ten years after his death and one hundred years after his birth

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

Es un poeta, educador y traductor puertorriqueño de experiencia trans nacido en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Cuenta con seis poemarios. Lo terciario / the tertiary (Noemi, 2019), su tercera colección, fue semifinalista para el Premio Nacional del Libro (EU) y ganador del Premio Literario Lambda. Su cuarto poemario, While they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds LLC, 2019), inspiró el título de la exhibición No existe un mundo poshuracán, en el Museo Whitney. Su libro más reciente, Antes que isla es volcán/ Before island is volcano (Beacon, 2022), ganó el Premio Juan Felipe Herrera y el Premio Campoy-Ada. Algarabía (GrayWolf, 2025), su séptimo poemario, es una epopeya trans especulativa. Sus demás reconocimientos incluyen el nombramiento como Poeta Laureado de la ciudad de Filadelfia, el Premio Nuevas Voces, el Premio de Traducción Literaria Sundial y el Premio Ambroggio. 

Coeditó las antologías Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous, 2019) y La piel del arrecife: Antología de poesía trans puertorriqueña (La Impresora, 2023). La traducción de la obra poética de su abuelo, Sotero Rivera Avilés, The Rust of History (Circumference, 2022), fue semifinalista para el Premio Nacional de Traducción de ALTA. Tuvo el honor de traducir el poema de Ada Limón dedicado a la Europa Clipper de la Administración Nacional de Aeronáutica y el Espacio (NASA), que actualmente viaja a una de las lunas de Júpiter. Se siente particularmente orgulloso de su traducción de Animal fiero y tierno / fierce and tender animal (Centro, 2024) de la gran poeta Ángela María Dávila. Gracias a una subvención de la iniciativa Tentacles, está recopilando y traduciendo los escritos y discursos de la activista trans Sylvia Rivera.  
 
Roque Raquel vive en San Juan desde 2020, donde enseña en la Facultad de Estudios Generales de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, y atiende a una gata muy fiera llamada Pietri.

Claudia Luna Fuentes

(México, 1969)

She holds a PhD in sciences and humanities for interdisciplinary development from the Autonomous University of Coahuila; a master's degree in history of contemporary society from the Ibero-American University Extension Saltillo, and a bachelor's degree in communication sciences from the Autonomous University of Coahuila. She has published among others, Los frutos del sol (MacMillan Castle, 2005) a children's book from the collection La Otra Escalera, included in the classroom library for preschool children. Her books of poems include Casa de Sol (FECA-Conaculta, 1995), Ruido de hormigas (Gatsby Ediciones, 2005), Carne para las flores, personal anthology (Aullido Libros, Spain 2011) and Donde la piel (Mantis Editores/Conarte, 2019). She appears among other anthologies, in Anuario de poesía mexicana (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006), in Hacia un azul imposible. (CEPE-UNAM/El Tapiz del Unicornio, 2023) and in Semillas de nuestra tierra. Muestra ecopoética mexicana (Grupo de Investigaciones Poéticas de la Madre Tierra and Cactus del viento, 2023). She won the Manuel Acuña Municipal Poetry Prize in 2008. In poetry she received a scholarship from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (Fonca 2003-2004), stimuli as a young creator and as a creator with a career from the Faculty of Economics, Accounting and Administration (FECA) and the Stimulus Program for Artistic Creation and Development (PECDA) on several occasions. She was a fellow of the Regional Fund for Culture and the Arts (FORCA)-Northeast 2011-2012, in Lima, Peru, where she taught workshops on object poetry. She was the guest of honor of the Tangier International Festival 2013 in Morocco, where her poetry translated into Arabic was read. Some of her work has English, German, Portuguese and French versions. Among the magazines in which she has published, the contemporary poetry magazine of Valencia  21veintiúnversos stands out; and in Lichtungen, in the section Literature of the North of Mexico, her poems were translated by Christoph Janacs. She participated in the exhibition of the Contemporary Photography Program section Coahuila, Tasar el humor (Museo de las Artes Gráficas, 2018). She generated material poems for the Bergman Chair of the UNAM. Her translated poems were printed on the wall at the Cultural Institute of Mexico in Paris, accompanying sculptures by Avelina and Alejandro Fuentes Quezada in the exhibition Continuous Extinction (2021). Environmental photographs and video poems were exhibited at the Mohammed Drissi Gallery, in Tangier (2021). She participated in a literary table and in the Coahuilense visual art exhibition entitled Segar el mar with a visual poem, within the 49th Cervantino Festival (2022). A selection of sound poems worked around the poem “Piedra de Sol”, by Octavio Paz, were left to be heard at the Marie-José Tramini and Octavio Paz Memorial, at the San Ildefonso College, within the Nature and Poetry Festival 2023 organized by the Octavio Paz Extraordinary Chair. Part of her poetry has been translated in 2024 into Polish by the poet and novelist Julia Fiedorczuk. In June 2024 she was invited by the University of Warsaw to share her creative processes. Currently, Dr. Pawel Piszczatowski, from the Center for Environmental Humanities of the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Warsaw, works on an article about his acoustic-visual and material work. She works as director of scientific dissemination and projects at the Desert Museum, where she is a founding member.

Other activities involving the participant:

Literature with eggs and machaca
If I were a Neanderthal

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
Poetry Room

Liliana Blum

She loves to adopt dogs from the street, feed pigeons, watch horror movies, and combine coffee with cookies, pastries or cake. She was born in Durango, in 1974, and although almost no one knows her city, she really likes it. As a narrator she has published the novels El extraño caso de Lenny Goleman (Young Planet, 2022), Cara de liebre (Seix Barral, 2020), El monstruo pentápodo (Bordes, 2019; Tusquets, 2017), Pandora (MaxiTusquets, 2020; Tusquets, 2015) and the books of short stories Un descuido cósmico (Tusquets, 2023), Todas hemos perdido algo (Tusquets, 2020), Tristeza de los cítricos (Páginas de Espuma, 2019), No me pases de largo (Literal Publishing, 2013), Residuos de espanto (Ficticia Editorial, 2012), Yo sé cuándo expira la leche (Instituto Municipal de Cultura de Durango, 2011), The curse of Eve and other stories (Host Publications, 2008), Vidas de catálogo (Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 2007), ¿En qué se nos fue la mañana? (Instituto Tamaulipeco para la Cultura y las Artes, 2005) y La maldición de Eva (Ediciones de Barlovento, 2003). She studied comparative literature at The University of Kansas, and has a master's degree in education with a specialty in humanities from the Institute of Technology and Superior Studies of Monterrey. 

Other activities involving the participant:

The Pleasure of Reading Gala
Literature between dogs and cats

Minerva Reynosa

She is a poet and cultural manager. She has published the poetry books: Emötoma, La íntima de las cosas, Atardecer en los suburbios, Photograms of My Conceptual Heart, Absolutely Blind, translated by Stalina Villarreal, Mammut & Jinba-Ittai; Larga oda a la salvación de Osvaldo in co-authorship with Sergio Ernesto Ríos, iremos que te pienso entre las filas y el olfato pobre de un paisaje con borrachos o ahorcados, and Lo mejor que damos. Antología personal. She won the Regional Prize of Noreste Carmen Alardín 2006 and the National Prize of Poetry Clemencia Isaura 2020. 
She is currently collaborating with Benjamín Moreno in the textual, visual and technological experimentation project Benerva. She is an online teacher, manager of various poetry awareness projects and belongs to the National System of Art Creators.

Other activities involving the participant:

Poetry Room

Elma Correa

She's a storyteller. She coordinates an international writers' meeting in Baja California and manages @habitaciones_propias, a virtual community where the women of the world share the spaces where they create. She has a degree in Spanish language and literature , a master in sociocultural studies and doctor in society, space and power. She teaches at the Faculties of Arts, Pedagogy and Human Sciences of the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) and teaches creative writing workshops. She has been a fellow of the Stimulus Program for Artistic Creation and Development of Baja California (PECDABC) and the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA). Her texts have been published in national and international journals, and have been included in various anthologies. She compiled Vacunas contra la poesía (SCBC, 2020), the Mexican section of Frontera Norte. Antología de narrativa chilena y mexican (Cinosargo, 2020), Ni una sola palabra (UANL, 2021) y Mexicanas 2 (Fondo Blanco, 2022). She wrote Que parezca un accidente (Nitro/Press, 2018), Mentiras que no te conté (UDG, 2021) with which she received the XX Juan José Arreola National Short Story Award; Llorar de fiesta (BUAP, 2022), Lo simple (INBAL, 2023) San Luis Potosí Amparo Dávila Fine Arts Short Story Award 2022, and La novia del león (Nitro/Press, 2024). 

Other activities involving the participant:

The Pleasure of Reading Gala
Annual International Storytellers Conference
Literature between dogs and cats

Dolores Redondo

Invitado de Honor

(Donostia-San Sebastián, 1969) is the author of the Baztán Trilogy, the most important literary phenomenon in Spanish of recent times: El guardián invisible, Legado en los huesos and Ofrenda a la tormenta. The three film adaptations were successfully launched between 2017 and 2020 and are currently available on Netflix. The trilogy was followed by All this I will give to you (2016 Planeta Award), the best-selling novel to have won this award in recent years and the subject of a television series adaptation by France Télévisions.

In 2019, she returned to the Baztán universe with North face of the heart, which, together with the Baztán Trilogy, will inspire a series produced in the United States and Great Britain, a landmark in contemporary Spanish fiction. Esperando al diluvio is her latest novel, also in the process of being adapted for the screen. In 2021, Los privilegios del ángel, her first novel, was republished. Today, her works have been translated into 38 languages all over the world, and boast more than 4 million readers.

Other activities involving the participant:

European Literature Festival

Berna González Harbour

Invitado de Honor

She is a writer, literary journalist and columnist for El País. She received the Dashiell Hammett Award in 2020 for El sueño de la razón (Destino), the latest novel in a saga starring Commissioner Ruiz, the first book of which, Verano en rojo, was made into a movie of the same name.

She writes crime novels, she created Commissioner Ruiz and is one of the “new nine” of Spanish crime literature, according to Paco Camarasa. She won the Libreros de Cantabria 2018 and José Estrañi 2019 awards, and sits on several literary juries. She is also a political analyst and cultural collaborator. She is an assistant director at El País, where she has edited Babelia and been sent to numerous countries in conflict. She hosts the program on books “¿Qué estás leyendo?”, and is a regular guest on the Hoy por hoy talk show on Cadena Ser, and on La Hora de la 1, on Televisión Española (RTVE).

This year she published the novel El Pozo (Destino) and the non-fiction work Goya en el país de los garrotazos (Arpa). She has been translated into German.

Other activities involving the participant:

The labyrinth of intrigue
Naming Central America because Central America counts
Opening of the Carlos Fuentes Literary Lounge

César Pérez Gellida

Valladolid, 1974. Ha publicado trece novelas, entre ellas las que componen las trilogías Versos, canciones y trocitos de carne (Memento mori, Dies irae, Consummatum est) y Refranes, canciones y rastros de sangre (Sarna con gusto, Cuchillo de palo, A grandes males); y otras como Todo lo mejor y Todo lo peor. Entre las más recientes, Nos crecen los enanos, Astillas en la piel y La suerte del enano.
En 2023 se ha estrenado la adaptación para serie de televisión de Memento mori. Es uno de los mayores referentes de la novela negra, con más de 300 mil lectores, y dirige junto con Dolores Redondo el festival literario Blacklladolid. Bajo tierra seca se alza con el Premio Nadal 2024.
 

Felipe Leal

Es arquitecto y académico. Su obra se enfoca al renglón cultural, educativo y del espacio público, reconocida a escalas nacional e internacional. Destacan los estudios realizados para pintores, escritores y su obra pública, como el Corredor Peatonal de Madero, la plaza y el Monumento a la Revolución, así como la recuperación de la Alameda Central. Director de la Facultad de Arquitectura de la UNAM (1997-2005) y profesor invitado a las principales universidades de América Latina, Norteamérica y Europa. Coordinó la gestión para la inscripción en la lista de Patrimonio Mundial de la Unesco a la Ciudad Universitaria de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Fue becario del Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Fonca) (2005-2008). Miembro emérito de la Academia Nacional de Arquitectura, miembro y presidente del Seminario de Cultura Mexicana. En 2019 recibió el Premio Arte-Arquitectura por el Congreso de la Ciudad de México. Ingresó a El Colegio Nacional el 26 de abril de 2021.

Other activities involving the participant:

From the great explosion to the origin of civilizations

Isabel López Pérez

Es arquitecta y diseñadora industrial; maestra en procesos y expresión gráfica; doctora en ciudad, territorio y sustentabilidad por la Universidad de Guadalajara. Ha incursionado en la investigación de temas como el arte en el espacio público, el arte y la arquitectura e historia del diseño. Actualmente es secretario académico y profesora del Departamento de Teorías e Historias y Proyectos Arquitectónicos en el Centro Universitario de Arte, Arquitectura y Diseño, actividades que complementa con su ejercicio profesional. En 2021 publicó El arte y la ciudad: posibilidades del arte en el espacio público, y en 2018 en Percepción de espacios arquitectónicos y urbanos contribuyó con el capítulo: Análisis de la arquitectura surrealista a través de la percepción de Las Pozas, Xilitla. Es miembro Nivel I del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores desde 2022.

Tania Quirarte Solano

Es arquitecta por el Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), es fundadora y directora de TAQ Arquitectura, firma con más de quince años de experiencia, y de PENSARQ, proyecto cultural enfocado en la difusión y reflexión arquitectónica y su vínculo con otras disciplinas como el arte, el diseño y la vida urbana. Su acercamiento a la arquitectura es reconocido por su naturalidad y diseño junto con su especial atención a los detalles, teniendo la premisa de que la arquitectura debe ser un fiel reflejo de las personas que la habitan. Recientemente fue acreedora del Reconocimiento a la Difusión del Premio de Arquitectura Jalisco 2023.

Salvador Macías

Es arquitecto con título de honor por el Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO, 2001).  Maestro en teoría y práctica del proyecto por la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona de la Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (UPC). Miembro de la Academia Nacional de Arquitectura capítulo Guadalajara. Socio fundador de Estudio Macías Peredo. Es miembro de la Fundación de Arquitectura Tapatía Luis Barragán, director y fundador del espacio de arquitectura Jardín 17 de la Casa Luis Barragán en la Ciudad de México. Su trabajo se ha exhibido en instituciones como el Palacio de Bellas Artes en Ciudad de México, el Instituto Cultural Cabañas en Guadalajara, la Universidad Técnica de Lisboa, en Portugal, en el Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) College of Architecture, en Chicago, en Mantua Italia, en Venecia Italia y en el Museum of Modern Art de San Francisco. Ha recibido el Premio Emerging Voices 2014 y el premio Cemex 2018.

Alejandro Cruz Atienza

Es director de publicaciones de El Colegio Nacional, fundador y codirector editorial de La Caja de Cerillos Ediciones. Hace más de veintisiete años trabaja en el mundo de la edición: primero a partir de la fundación y dirección de El Pasamanos. Periódico para los niños y niñas de la Ciudad de México; después como jefe de Redacción y director del suplemento de libros Hoja por Hoja, más adelante como editor de la colección Para Entender y el área de ensayo de Nostra Ediciones, así como siendo jefe de Redacción de La Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) y editor de las publicaciones de Casa Vecina. Ha publicado artículos en distintos medios, entre los que se encuentran Letras Libres, La Gaceta del FCE, SP Revista de Libros y Libros de México, y ha sido profesor e impartido cursos, talleres y conferencias vinculadas al mundo de la edición y la creación en instituciones y academias mexicanas y extranjeras, como la Sociedad General de Escritores de México (Sogem), el Centro Cultural de España, la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), la Feria Internacional al del Libro de Guadalajara (FIL), la Feria Internacional del Libro de Bogotá (FilBo), la Primavera del Libro en Santiago de Chile, la Universidad de Buenos Aires y el Diplomado de Edición organizado por Sexto Piso, entre otros. Es coautor del libro Palabras para nombrar al mundo.
 

Legna Rodríguez Iglesias

She is an outstanding Cuban writer born in Camagüey in 1984. She lives in Miami. She is a poet, storyteller, playwright and essayist. Her literary style stands out for its versatility and depth, where she often combines absurd humor and the challenging look of everyday life. She is a recognized author with several significant awards, such as the Julio Cortázar Ibero-American Short Story Prize, 2011; the Paz Prize for Poetry, awarded by The National Poetry Series, United States, 2016;  Casa de Las Américas Prize in Theater in 2016; the Centrifugados de Poesía Joven, Spain, 2019; and the Franz Kafka Essay / Testimony, Prague, 2024. She is the author of the novels Mayonesa bien brillante (Ediciones Matanzas, 2012); Las analfabetas (Bokeh Press, 2015); and My Favorite Girlfriend Was a French Bulldog (McSweeney's Publishing, 2020). She has published several short story titles and several poetry titles. Her books have been translated into English, German, Italian and Portuguese. Her poetic anthology No creo en la poesía (Alliteration, 2022) has recently been published in English I Don't Believe in Poetry, (Alliteration, 2024). 

Other activities involving the participant:

Poetry Room

Héctor Abad Faciolince

(Medellín, 1958), son of Cecilia Faciolince and Héctor Abad Gómez, a prominent doctor, university professor and human rights advocate, who was also the founder of the Colombian National School of Public Health, is a Colombian writer, translator and journalist.

He studied Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Turin from 1982 to 1987. He was Director of the Revista de la Universidad de Antioquia (1993-1997), Director of the EAFIT University Press (2004-2006) and then Director of the Luis Echavarría Villegas Library Cultural Center at EAFIT University (2013-2017). He also worked as a journalist and columnist for various Colombian media publications: El Espectador, Cromos, El Colombiano, and the magazines Cambio and Semana. He has received the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Award twice (1998 and 2007) for his opinion articles.

His essays, translations and literary criticism include: The Joy of Being Awake (Brookline, 1996), Recipes for sad women (Pushkin, 2012), Fragmentos de amor furtivo (Alfaguara, 1998), Basura (2000, Lengua de Trapo de Narrativa Innovadora Prize), Angosta (2003; Alfaguara, 2020), La Oculta (Alfaguara, 2015), Lo que fue presente (Alfaguara, 2019) and his most recent novel Salvo mi corazón, todo está bien (Alfaguara, 2022). His most celebrated book, Oblivion: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), tells the story of his father, Dr. Héctor Abad Gómez, and the circumstances surrounding his murder, and has received multiple accolades in different countries.

He is currently a columnist and editorial advisor for the newspaper El Espectador. He also contributes to El País in Madrid, Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Zurich and other national and international publications. His novels have been translated into different languages, including English, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, French and German.

Other activities involving the participant:

Memory of oblivion

Virginia Mórtola

(Uruguay, 1975)

Es escritora. Psicoanalista. Magíster en libros y literatura para niños y jóvenes por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Creadora y responsable de Túquiti. Portal de literatura infantil y juvenil. (https://tuquitiportal.com/portal.html) Es docente de literatura infantil en la Universidad Católica de Uruguay, y dicta charlas y talleres para diversas organizaciones e instituciones públicas y privadas. Difunde literatura en el programa radial No toquen nada, Emisora del Sol, (https://delsol.uy/notoquennada/virginiamortola)  y en Intervalo, Portal Cultural de Escaramuza (https://escaramuza.com.uy/authors/view-collaborator/177 ). Ha publicado los libros para niñas y niñas: La ventana de papel (Fin de Siglo, 2018), Premio Opera Prima del MEC; Cuentos de disparate y terror (Fin de Siglo, 2019), ¡Sim sala bim! Tres palabras mágicas (Criatura, 2019), Estrafalarius. Postales de una vida (Alfaguara, 2021) y Jardín ambulante (Criatura, 2021), Primer Premio en Literatura Infantil, MEC, y destacado por Fundación CuatroGatos, Ema y las abejas (Syncreticpress, 2022), Un mar de preguntas (Syncreticpress, 2024) y el álbum poético PasaTiempo (Alfaguara, 2024).
Creó, para el Plan CEIBAL (Conectividad Educativa de Informática Básica para el Aprendizaje en Línea) y para la Administración Nacional de Educación Pública (ANEP), una serie de cuatro libros informativos sobre ciudadanía digital: SOMOS ciudadanos digitales, CREAMOS huella digital, CUIDAMOS nuestro entorno digital y QUEREMOS participar y crear. https://ceibal.edu.uy/institucional/articulos/coleccion-de-libros-de-ciudadania-digital-para-ninos-y-ninas/
Para adultos: Ni Dios sabía (Fin de Siglo, 2022) Primer Premio en Narrativa, MEC; y coordinó la antología de cuentos de autores uruguayos: La existencia está en otra parte. Relatos en homenaje a los 100 años del manifiesto surrealista. (Fin de Siglo, 2024).
 

Other activities involving the participant:

LIJ Authors Panel

Petronella Zetterlund

(Sweden, 1974). She is a teacher of Hispanic literature, translator, editor, producer and cultural manager. She is co-founder and manager of Nordic Exchange in Literature, a Nordic multilingual literature project, and is co-founder, deputy director and general coordinator of NOX Escuela de Escritura Creativa, where she also teaches literary translation laboratories. Among her translations of Swedish literature, there are  Ma by Ida Börjel (Filodecaballos, 2019), Álbum by Leif Holmstrand (Palacio de la Fatalidad, 2018), Los otros jardines and En el ramaje by Lennart Sjögren (Esquina Tomada, Medellín, 2023) and Cosas que provocan inquietud by Jenny Tunedal (Palacio de la Fatalidad, 2018), among others, as well as the short story collection Alrededor de las rejas, by Agnes von Krusenstjerna (UNAM/Collection Lic. Vidriera, 2020). Since 2017, she has been living in Mexico City, and works independently under the label Petzetera Texts and Other Texts.

Other activities involving the participant:

Contemporary Nordic poetry

José Luis Rico

(Mexico, 1987)

Poet and translator based in Helsinki. He has published Blanco (2012, La Dïéresis), Duna (2013, FETA), Jabalíes (2015, FETA; Francisco Cervantes Vidal National Prize for Young Poetry) and El aire es esta piedra en la que voy (2015, La Vencedora). In 2021, he curated Arúspice rascacielos, anthology of the work of Mariela Dreyfus, in Lima. He served as editor-in-chief and translator in the anthology of contemporary poetry Saaristo (Sivuvalo, 2023), which brings together 52 Russian-, Spanish-, Finnish- and Arabic-speaking poets. He translated Disco de titanes, by the Finnish poet Sini Silveri (2022) and Fun is a difficult genre, by Juha Rautio (2024) under the label Pitzilein Books. A selection of the poet Tiina Lehikoinen will be published this year by the Chilean publishing house Cinosargo. Rico has been a fellow of the Foundation for Mexican Letters, the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA), the Graduate School of New York University, the Center for Artistic Promotion of Finland (TAIKE), and the Niilo Helander and Kone foundations of Finland. He frequents the sauna, and complains about the price of mezcal.

Other activities involving the participant:

Contemporary Nordic poetry

Roxana Crisólogo

(Peru/Finland). Poet, translator, cultural manager, with a law background.  She has published poetry books: Abajo sobre el cielo (Lima, 1999) whose Finnish translation Alhaalla taivaan yllä was published by Kääntöpiiri (Helsinki, 2001). She also published Animal del camino (Santo Oficio, Lima, 2001; Libros del Cardo, Chile, 2019), Ludy D (Lima, 2006), Trenes (Mexico, 2010). Eisbrecher (Hochroth Verlag, 2017) is the title of the selection of her poetry translated into German. Sotto sopra il cielo is the title of the anthology of her poetry translated into Italian published by Seri Editore. Kauneus La belleza (Intermezzo Tropical, Lima, 2021; Ediciones Nebliplateada, Buenos Aires, 2023) is her penultimate book of poetry, a selection of which was translated into French titled Un jour je m'en irai sans rien emporter (trans. Patricia Houéfa Grange; Éditions KLAC, Bordeaux, 2024). Dónde dejar tanto ruido (Album del Universo Bakterial, Lima, 2023) is her most recent book. Crisólogo lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.  

Other activities involving the participant:

Contemporary Nordic poetry

Dylan Brennan

(Ireland)

Brennan divides his time between Mexico and Ireland and writes poetry and prose. He was the winner of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award. In 2022, he won the inaugural Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend Poetry Film Award for Four Attempts at Making a Human, a poetry film in collaboration with Jonathan Brennan. He has read at literary festivals in Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Italy, Ireland and the United States and has twice received a Culture Ireland Travel Grant. His work has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Galician and Greek. His most recent book, Let the Dead (2023), is available from Banshee Press.

Claudia Durastanti

(United States of America, 1984)

Claudia Durastanti is the author of five novels. She is the Italian translator of Elizabeth Hardwick, Joshua Cohen, Donna Haraway and writes for several literary supplements. Strangers I Know (Premio Strega Off in 2019, Pen Translates Award, longlist Prix Femina and Prix Les Inrockuptibles) has been translated into twenty-one languages. Missitalia (La Nave di Teseo, Premio Mondello 2024) will be published by Anagrama in Spain. She currently lives in Rome and curates the feminist imprint La Tartaruga.

Other activities involving the participant:

The Roma-Milan is Killing Us. Where does the new Italian literature come from?

Neige Sinno

(France, 1977)

She was born in 1977 in the Hautes-Alpes region. She lived in the United States for a while and currently resides in Mexico with her partner and her daughter. She is a translator and has published the short story collection La Vie des rats (2007), the literary essay Lectores entre líneas: Roberto Bolaño, Ricardo Piglia y Sergio Pitol (Aldus, 2011, Lya Kostakowsky Prize) and the novel Le Camion (2018). After its launch in France, Triste tigre, a non-fiction text that deals with the systematic sexual violence she suffered as a child, she immediately became the publishing phenomenon of the year and has received multiple awards, including in 2023 the Prix littéraire Le Monde; the Prix Blù Jean-Marc Roberts; the Prix Les Inrockuptibles; the Prix Goncourt des lycéens; the Prix Femina and in 2024 in its Italian translation the European Strega Award.

Deniz Utlu

Utlu studied economics in Berlin and Paris. He is the author of several novels and lives in Berlin. He has received several awards, such as the Alfred Döblin, the Literatour Nord and the Bavarian Book Prize. From 2003 to 2014 he edited the culture and society magazine freitext. Since 2013 he has been the curator of a literary series at the Maxim Gorky Theater and a researcher at the German Institute for Human Rights.

Sergio Vila-Sanjuán

Invitado de Honor

Journalist, novelist and playwright, and he manages the Cultura/s supplement of La Vanguardia.He is the author of the fiction trilogy consisting of Una heredera de Barcelona, Estaba en el aire (2013 Nadal Award), and El informe Casabona, which combines family memory and chronicles of the time. He has also written the plays El club de la escalera and La agente literaria, which recently premiered at the Teatre Akadèmia in Barcelona.

He has published several books on literary, publishing and artistic topics, such as Pasando página, El síndrome de Frankfurt, Código best seller and Vargas Llosa sube al escenario, and the biography El joven Porcel. His latest book is Cultura española en democracia. Una crónica breve de 50 años 1975-2024 (Destino).

He was the curator of the Year of the Book and Reading 2005, and is a member of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona. He received the 2020 Premio Nacional de Periodismo Cultural and the José Luis Giménez-Frontín Award from the Association of Writers of Catalonia (ACEC) for dialogue between cultures.

Other activities involving the participant:

Exploring of the outside from within
Meetings (and misunderstandings). Cultural journalism in an era of excess
The prescribers

Huáscar Robles Carrasquillo

The proverb “to laugh so as not to cry” is echoed in the work of Huáscar Robles. The humor of his novels, short stories and essays cushion the rugged path he covers in the Caribbean and the Puerto Rico that saw him grow up.  Huáscar is the author of the novel Demonios (Secta de los Perros, San Juan, 2022) on religious extremism in the years of political repression in Puerto Rico, and Puerto Príncipe: temblemos todos (La Cifra, Mexico City, 2017), a non-fiction book about Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. 

His fiction and essays have been published by Revista Temporales NYU, Evento Horizonte, Chicago Tribune, and others. For a decade he wrote opinion columns for El Nuevo Día from Puerto Rico and covered cultural, migratory and LGBTQ+ issues. His podcast Catatonia received praise from the LA Review of Books, and he has collaborated with CNN or other media. He was recently selected for The Masters' Review novel snippets competition, and received honorable mention in the CRAFT competition judged by Rebecca Makkai for his novel, Leda. 

As a journalist, Huáscar has published with The New York Times, Orlando Sentinel and the Center for Investigative Journalism. He has lectured at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), New York University, Boston University, Columbia University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He has commented for CNN and NY1 News.

Puerto Rico Under Water, The Country Under My Skin, Los silencios de Santurce, and Portraits of Marassa are some of his photographic works in the United States and Puerto Rico, as well as the documentary La costa invisible, about the struggle of Haitian merchants in the town of Loíza, in Puerto Rico.

He received the Ochberg Scholarship from Columbia University, the Urban Scholarship from the Center for Justice and Journalism, an artistic residency from AS220, and the cultural exchange from the Brunetto School in Brazil. His collection Country Under My Skin was acquired by the Rhode Island Historical Society's Permanent Gallery. 

Huáscar has a master's degree in fine arts from New York University. 

His current project is the hybrid novel Los penúltimos días sobre la intersección del Caribe, the apocalypse and reggaeton.

Catalina Murillo Valverde

Costa Rica, 1970. Nació en un taxi. De los siete a los 17 años estudió en el Liceo Franco Costarricense. A los ocho años tenía un periódico mural, El Espeluznante, en una pared de la casa. En la Universidad de Costa Rica estudió comunicación, sin saber qué hacer con “ese gran talento tuyo”, del cual no había constancia.
Fue salvada por la Escuela Internacional de Cine, en Cuba. Ahí estudió guion, y entendió que contar historias era algo a lo que una podía dedicarse. De regreso a Costa Rica, publicó Largo domingo cubano, crónica. 
Con 28 años renació en Madrid, donde vivió un par de décadas, trabajando en teleseries y como profesora de guion y de escritura creativa en los Talleres Fuentetaja.
De vuelta en Costa Rica, publicó Tiembla, memoria, su libro más personal. Maybe Managua, novela que obtuvo el Premio Nacional de novela. Marzo todopoderoso y Eloísa vertical, novela de no ficción.
Su mayor pasión son sus talleres, Cata Oral. Toda su vida ha vivido de la palabra, escrita y hablada.
En marzo de 2024 Alfaguara publicó su obra más reciente, Una mujer insignificante.
 

Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez

Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez (Ciudad de Guatemala, 1982), ha publicado las novelas Los jueces (XI Premio Centroamericano de Novela Mario Monteforte Toledo en 2009) y Puente adentro (III Premio BAM Letras en 2015), traducida al alemán como Die rache der Mercedes Lima (Büchergilde, 2017). En 2013 publicó el libro de relatos La palabra cementerio (Punto de Lectura, 2013) y la crónica El círculo rojo (Plaza Pública).

Felipe Restrepo Pombo

Writer, editor and journalist. He has written six books that have been published in different languages. In 2017, he was selected as one of the best writers under 40 in Latin America. In 2021, he received the Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simón Bolívar in Colombia. He is the coordinator of the Premio Anagrama de Crónica and editor of the Crónica collection. He has worked with dozens of international media outlets. He has taught writing workshops in the United States, Spain, Mexico and Latin America. He is an occasional columnist for El País and Letras Libres. He was the editor of the Gatopardo magazine for six years.

Other activities involving the participant:

Meetings (and misunderstandings). En otro país
The Pleasure of Reading Gala