Benengeli INTERNATIONAL WEEK OF LITERATURE IN SPANISH 2021

28, 29, 30 JUNE 2021 Manila Manchester New York Benengeli INTERNATIONAL WEEK OF LITERATURE IN SPANISH 2021

ALL THE VIRTUAL EVENTS CAN BE FOLLOWED ON:

Instituto Cervantes Instituto Cervantes Instituto Cervantes Instituto Cervantes Manila Mánchester Nueva York

Benengeli 2021. International Week of Literature in Spanish is a literary festival that in this first edition will focus on the promotion of literature in Spanish in English-speaking countries. We will travel over three days in a literary world tour through the centers of Manila, Manchester and New York. On June 28, 29 and 30, videos and podcast of different authors will be posted on the YouTube and Ivoox channels of the three centers, offering their reflections on the central theme of this edition: autofiction and the self in literature. We will enjoy the conversation of Antonio Muñoz Molina, Pilar Quintana, José Balza and Guadalupe Nettel, among other authors, literary agents and translators from different countries, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, , , the United Kingdom, the Philippines and the United States, among others.

IN COLLABORATION WITH: INTRODUCTION

Luis García Montero Director. Instituto Cervantes

JUNE 28 YouTube I 9 am (local time) New York I Manila I Manchester

BENENGELI’S READINGS These dialogues with Antonio Muñoz Molina, José Balza and Pilar Quintana, recorded in Madrid, Caracas and Bogotá, will introduce the audience to their experience as writers and readers.

Antonio Muñoz Molina in conversation with Lola Larumbe

JUNE 28 YouTube I 12 pm (local time) New York I Manila I Manchester

José Balza in conversation with Lilian Granados

JUNE 29 YouTube I 12 pm (local time) New York I Manila I Manchester

Pilar Quintana in conversation with Ileana Bolívar

JUNE 30 YouTube I 12 pm (local time) New York I Manila I Manchester

AUTOFICTION IN BENENGELI Reflections on the self in literature.

JUNE 28

Lorenzo Silva Almudena Sánchez Mariano Peyrou YouTube I 10 am (local time) YouTube I 2 pm (local time) YouTube I 5 pm (local time) New York I Manila I Manchester New York I Manila I Manchester New York I Manila I Manchester

JUNE 29

Karina Sáinz Borgo Mercedes Cebrián Juan Malpartida YouTube I 10 am (local time) YouTube I 2 pm (local time) YouTube I 5 pm (local time) New York I Manila I Manchester New York I Manila I Manchester New York I Manila I Manchester

JUNE 30

Martín Casariego Margaryta Yakovenko YouTube I 10 am (local time) YouTube I 2 pm (local time) New York I Manila I Manchester New York I Manila I Manchester

BENENGELI’S VOICES Authors, literary agents and translators will share with the audience their experiences in the publishing sector.

JUNE 28 Ivoox│2 pm GMT+2

Karla Suárez Pedro Mairal Andrea Montejo Esther Allen

JUNE 29 Ivoox│2 pm GMT+2

Alberto Guadalupe Nettel Anna Soler-Pont Andrés Neuman Barrera Tyszka

JUNE 30 Ivoox│2 pm GMT+2

Andrea Abreu Ricardo Sarah Pollack Menéndez Salmón

I CONFESS THAT I HAVE READ Fernando Iwasaki will travel the past and present of the best literature in the Spanish language.

Fernando Iwasaki presents

Marta Susana Prieto María Fernanda Ampuero

Claudia Amengual Andrés Trapiello

Carlos Wynter Melo Juana Manuela Gorriti

Raquel Saguier Sergio Pitol

Gioconda Belli José Santos González Vera

Rafael Bolívar Coronado Max Jiménez

Héctor Abad Faciolince Jacinta Escudos

Julio Ramón Ribeyro Rita Indiana

Ena Lucía Portela Ana Lydia Vega

Augusto Monterroso Hilda Mundy

JUNE 28│YouTube│9 am & 3 pm (local time) JUNE 29│YouTube│9 am (local time) JUNE 30│YouTube│9 am & 3 pm (local time)

New York I Manila I Manchester CONVERSATIONS AT BENENGELI

DISFIGURATIONS OF THE SELF: SUBJECTIVITY IN THE NOVEL Jose Dalisay, Víctor del Árbol y Hernán Díaz in conversation with Jessica Zafra

JUNE 28 (MANILA) YouTube│7 pm (local time) Manila

THE SELF-EXPERIENCE IN PICTURES: GRAPHIC (AUTO)FICTION Quan Zhou Wu e Isabel Greenberg in conversation with James Scorer

JUNE 29 (MANCHESTER) YouTube│7 pm (local time) Manchester

NEW TRENDS IN FICTION: SELF-EXPERIENCE AS RAW MATERIAL Liliana Colanzi, Sandra Araya y Antonio Díaz Oliva in conversation with Alberto Ferreras

JUNE 30 (NEW YORK) YouTube│7 pm (local time) New York ANDREA ABREU Andrea Abreu (1995, Tenerife, Spain) is a journalist and writer. She has written the poetry collection Mujer sin párpados. Her first novel, Panza de burro, will be translated into various languages and adapted for the screen. Abreu has been selected as one of the best under-35 Spanish voices by the prestigious magazine Granta.

ESTHER ALLEN Esther Allen is a writer and translator. She is a professor at and in the Ph.D. Programs in French and in Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures at City University of New York Graduate Center, and is director of Baruch’s Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program. Allen is a two-time recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships (1995 and 2010). Her translation of Zama, by Antonio Di Benedetto, won the 2017 National Translation Award. In 2018-2019, she was a Guggenheim Fellow. She co-founded the PEN World Voices Festival in 2005. In 2006, the French government named her a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Her essays, translations and interviews have appeared in the New York Review of Books Daily, the Paris Review, Words Without Borders, Bomb, LitHub, the New Yorker and other publications. She has translated into English, among other works, Antonio Muñoz Molina’s novel In Her Absence.

SANDRA ARAYA Sandra Araya is a writer from Quito, Ecuador, born in 1980. She has published titles such as Orange, El Cielo por Partes, Un Suceso Extraño, and El Lobo, el Espía, la Carnada, el Precio. She is part of the project El cuento contemporáneo escrito con eñe, of the Instituto Cervantes of Milan, which promotes the dissemination of short stories in Italy. She has been recognized with the Pablo Palacio Biennial Award and the La Linares Short Novel Award for her book La Familia del Dr Lehman.

VICTOR DEL ÁRBOL Víctor del Árbol was born in Barcelona in 1968. He was a policeman until 2012, when his literary career made him devote himself to writing. He is the author of El Peso de los Muertos, El Abismo de los Sueños, La Tristeza del Samurái, Breathes for the Wound and A Million Drops, among others. Translated into more than ten languages, he is one of the most widely read foreign authors in France. In 2018, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic.

JOSÉ BALZA José Balza is a writer born in the Orinoco Delta (Venezuela), in 1939. A cult author in the Spanish- language literature, his work combines a passion for art, cities, human complexity and jungle life. His work includes novels such as Marzo Anterior, Largo, Percusión, Después Caracas and Un Hombre de Aceite, among others. He has also published volumes of short stories such as Órdenes, La Mujer de Espaldas, Un Orinoco Fantasma, or Ciudad en Ciudades, and essays such as Este Mar Narrativo, Observaciones y Aforismos, Pensar a Venezuela, or Play b. He received the National Prize for Literature of Venezuela in 1991.

ALBERTO BARRERA TYSZKA Alberto Barrera Tyszka (Caracas, Venezuela, 1960) is a Venezuelan writer. He has published four novels, a poetry collection, and three books of history. In 2015 his novel Patria o Muerte (The Last Days of El Comandante) about Hugo Chávez and his struggle with cancer, won the XI Premio Tusquets de Novela. He is a Professor of Literature at the Central University of Venezuela. He is a regular columnist for the daily newspaper El Nacional, and a regular contributor to the magazine Letras Libres. He has written telenovela screenplays in Argentina, , , and Venezuela. Barrera’s works have been translated into Mandarin, French, English, and Italian. He lives in Mexico City.

ILEANA BOLÍVAR Ileana Bolívar is a Colombian journalist, graduated from the Central University of Bogotá. Founder in 2001 of the Fundación Cultural Libros y Letras, she coordinates the magazine of the same name. She works in radio and television production in different media, and in the edition of printed publications.

MARTÍN CASARIEGO Martín Casariego has published various novels, short stories, books for children and several screenplays. He is the author of Qué te voy a Contar (Tigre Juan Prize), Algunas Chicas son como Todas, La Hija del Coronel (Ateneo de Sevilla Prize), Un Amigo así (Planeta, 2013) and El Juego sigue sin mí (Siruela, 2015), among others. He also published a collection of literary portraits of historical figures entitled Con las Suelas al Viento (La línea del horizonte, 2017). His latest work is the Max Lomax noir series, of which the two first installments have just been published: Yo Fumo para Olvidar que tú Bebes (Siruela, 2020) and Mi Precio es Ninguno (Siruela, 2021).

MERCEDES CEBRIÁN Mercedes Cebrián (Madrid, Spain) has published narrative, essays, and poetry. Her book La nueva taxidermia (Mondadori, 2011) was a finalist for the Tigre Juan Prize in 2012. Her most recent collection of poems is Muchacha de Castilla. Her book Burp. Gastronomical Writings was translating into English in 2017. Cebrián is a regular contributor to El País and Letras Libres. She has translated into Spanish works by Georges Perec, Alan Sillitoe, and Miranda July, among other authors. She received a grant to study literature in the Academy of Spain in Rome and has been author in residence at the Civitella Ranieri Center, the Fondazione Santa Maddalena and Fundación MALBA in Buenos Aires. She has a Master’s degree in Hispanic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

LILIANA COLANZI Liliana Colanzi is the publisher of the independent literary press Dum Dum editora in Bolivia. As a writer, she has published the short story books Vacaciones Permanentes (2010) and Nuestro Mundo Muerto (Our Dead World, Dalkey Archive Press, 2017). In 2015 she won the Aura Estrada literary award (Mexico). The Hay Festival Cartagena included her among the best Latin American writers under 40 (Bogotá39, 2017). Nuestro mundo muerto has been translated into five languages. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University.

JOSE DALISAY Jose Dalisay is a Filipino writer. He has published more than 30 books of fiction and nonfiction plus numerous plays and screenplays. Six of those books have garnered National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle. In 1998, Dalisay made it to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Centennial Honors List as one of the 100 most accomplished Filipino artists of the past century. Among his numerous books are Oldtimer and Other Stories, Sarcophagus and Other Stories, Killing Time in a Warm Place, The Lavas: A Filipino Family, The Best of Barfly and The Filipino Flag. His second novel, Soledad’s Sister, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize, and he has won 16 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. Dalisay’s books have also been published in the United States, Italy, France and Spain. He is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of the Philippines.

HERNÁN DIAZ A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Hernán Diaz has published stories and essays in Cabinet, The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Playboy, Granta, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. His first novel, In the Distance, was translated into a dozen languages and was the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year, one of Lit Hub’s Top 20 Books of the Decade, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has a PhD from NYU, edits an academic journal at Columbia University, and is also the author of Borges, between History and Eternity.

ANTONIO DÍAZ OLIVA Antonio Díaz Oliva (ADO) is a Chilean writer living in Chicago. He is the author of the novel La soga de los muertos and the short story collections La Experiencia Formativa, La Experiencia Deformativa and Las Experiencias. He is also the editor of 20/40 and Estados Hispanos de América (Nueva Narrativa Latinoamericana Made in USA), in which he brings together authors who write in Spanish and live in the United States. He received the Roberto Bolaño Young Writers Award and the National Book Award for Best Story Collection of the Year. He was chosen by FIL-Guadalajara as one of the most outstanding Latin American writers born during the 80s. His journalism and essays have been published in Asymptote, Rolling Stone, Latin American Literature Today, Gatopardo, Letras Libres and El Malpensante. He teaches bilingual creative writing and translation at Saint Xavier University.

ALBERTO FERRERAS Alberto Ferreras is a New York based Spanish/Venezuelan writer and director. He created, executed produced and directed the HBO documentary series Habla (2003-2020). His award-winning novel B as in Beauty (Hachette) was published in the U.S., Spain, and Italy in 2009. His short films Verbal Sex (1999) and Tómbola (1997) premiered at the Berlinale, and Bigger (2004) premiered at Outfest and was presented at London’s B.F.I. He is currently consulting for the Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington D.C.

LILIAN GRANADOS Lilian Granados is a Venezuelan journalist graduated from the Andrés Bello Catholic University and a surgeon graduated from the UCV. Radio host, she also works on digital journalism as a disseminator of cultural and scientific information on digital networks. She studied Ballet and Contemporary Dance.

ISABEL GREENBERG Isabel Greenberg is a London-based illustrator and writer and the author of three acclaimed graphic novels: The Encylopedia of Early Earth, The One Hundred Nights Of Hero and her latest Glass Town (2020). She is the illustrator of a number of children’s books including One Hundred Billion Trillion Stars, Power Up and The Ocean In Your Bathtub. Isabel studied illustration at the University of Brighton and an MA in animation at the Royal College of Art. She is an associate lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL.

FERNANDO IWASAKI Fernando Iwasaki, born in 1961 in Lima, is a Peruvian writer and historian. He has published more than 20 volumes of fiction and non-fiction, such as Neguijón, El Libro del Mal Amor, Helarte de Amar and Papel Carbón, among others. He contributes regularly to various newspapers and magazines. His work has been translated into half a dozen languages, including Russian, English, French, Italian, Romanian and Korean. He currently lives in Sevilla, Spain, where he is a Professor at the Loyola University.

LOLA LARUMBE Lola Larumbe is a bookseller, born in Madrid in 1960. She has been in charge of the Rafael Alberti bookstore in Madrid for more than 40 years. In 2005, the bookstore was awarded the Premio Librero Cultural by the Spanish Ministry of Culture for its Encuentros en la Alberti project. The independent publishers of Madrid awarded it the Bibliodiversity Prize in 2004 for the variety and richness of its book collection, with more than 20,000 titles.

PEDRO MAIRAL Pedro Mairal is an Argentine novelist, essayist, poet, and professor of English literature. He first garnered critical and public acclaim with the 1998 publication of One Night with Sabrina Love, for which he was awarded the Premio Clarín. In 2007, he was included in the Bogotá39, which named the best Latin American author. In 2016 he published La Uruguaya, which won the Tigre Juan Prize in 2017 and which, after its publication in Argentina, has been published in more than ten editions by the Spanish publishing house Libros del Asteroide. Nick Caistor’s translation of Mairal’s novel The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra has just been published by New Vessel Press.

JUAN MALPARTIDA Juan Malpartida is a poet, narrator and literary critic born in Marbella, Spain, in 1956. He has published novels such as Señora del Mundo, Camino de Casa; Reloj de Viento and La Tarde a la Deriva. He is the author of several essays such as Octavio Paz: un Camino de Convergencies, Los Rostros del Tiempo and Mi Vecino Montaigne, published in 2021. As a poet, his books stand out: Espiral; Bajo un Mismo Sol; A un Mar Futuro and Río que Vuelve, among others. He has won the City of Barbastro Novel Award and the ABC Cultural & Ámbito Cultural Award.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ SALMÓN Ricardo Menéndez Salmón (Gijón, Spain, 1971) is a Spanish writer. He is best known for his trilogy of novels La Ofensa, Derrumbe and El Corrector. He has also published a travel book, a play, poems and short stories. He contributes regularly to Spanish newspapers and literary journals. He holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Oviedo. He has won many literary prizes, including the 2016 Premio Biblioteca Breve for El Sistema, and has been translated into many languages, although not so far into English. His latest work, which appeared in January 2020, is a memoir entitled No entres dócilmente en esa Noche quieta.

ANDREA MONTEJO Andrea Montejo, born in Colombia, graduated from the University of Paris IV-Sorbone. She started her career in the publishing industry at HarperCollins New York, where she co-founded Rayo, an imprint for Latin American and Spanish-language books that sought to bring to the United States titles of Spanish and Latin American authors. In 2007 she founded Indent Literary Agency that represents global authors in Spanish, Portuguese and English language. ANTONIO MUÑOZ MOLINA One of the foremost authors of the new Spanish narrative, Antonio Muñoz was born in Úbeda, Spain, in 1956. He studied geography and history at the University of Granada, where he lived for almost 20 years. He began writing in the 1980s and his first published book, El Robinson Urbano, a collection of his journalistic work, was published in 1984. His novels include Beatus Ille, Winter in Lisbon, Plenilunio, and El Jinete Polaco, among others. He has received the Premio Planeta, the National Narrative Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Award for literature. Margaret Sayers Peden’s English- language translation of his novel Sepharad won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. He is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

GUADALUPE NETTEL Guadalupe Nettel, born in 1973, is a Mexican writer. She has published four novels, including The Body Where I Was Born and After the Winter. She won the Premio de Narrativa Breve Ribera del Duero and the Premio Herralde literary awards. She has been a contributor to Granta, The White Review, El País, The New York Times, La Repubblica and La Stampa. Her works have been translated into more than twenty languages. She is the editor of the Revista de la Universidad de México, the oldest cultural magazine in Mexico.

ANDRÉS NEUMAN Andrés Neuman was born and spent his childhood in Buenos Aires. The son of exiled Argentinean musicians, he grew up in Granada, where he taught Latin American literature at the University of Granada. He was part of the first Bogotá39 list and was selected by the British magazine Granta as one of the best new writers in Spanish. He is the author of novels such as Bariloche, Una vez Argentina, El Viajero del Siglo, Hablar solos and Fractura, and books of short stories such as Alumbramiento and Hacerse el Muerto. An anthology of his extensive poetic work has been collected in the volume Casa fugaz. His most recent book is Anatomía sensible. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has received the Critics’ Prize, the Alfaguara Prize and the Hiperion Poetry Prize.

MARIANO PEYROU Mariano Peyrou, born in 1971, is a Spanish writer. He lives in Madrid, where he works as a teacher of Creative Writing, Jazz History and Music Aesthetics. He has published the books of poems La Voluntad de Equilibrio, A Veces Transparente, La Sal, Estudio de lo Visible and Posibilidades en la Sombra, among others. He is also the author of the novels De los Otros and Los Nombres de las Cosas. He has recently published an essay on poetry, Tensión y Sentido.

SARAH POLLACK Sarah Pollack is a professor of Latin American literature and translation studies at the College of Staten Island, University of , and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her translations from Spanish into English include authors such as Juan Villoro, Fabio Morábito, Enrique Fierro and Oswaldo Estrada, and have been published in leading literary journals such as Bomb, Gulf Coast and International Poetry Review. She has also published the poetry collections Eloise by Silvia Eugenia Castillero and Reason Enough by Ida Vitale. Her translation of the novel An Evocation of Matthias Stimmberg, by Mexican author Alain-Paul Mallard, will be published by Wakefield Press.

PILAR QUINTANA Pilar Quintana is a Colombian writer. She was born in Cali and studied at the Javeriana University in Bogota. She is best known for her novels La Perra, which won the IV Award Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, and Coleccionistas de Polvos Raros, which won the La Mar de Letras Award. Her short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies across Latin America, and in Spain, and Germany. In 2007, the Hay Festival Bogotá named Quintana among the 39 most important Latin American writers under the age of 39.

KARINA SAINZ BORGO Karina Sainz Borgo was born and raised in Caracas. She began her career in Venezuela as a journalist for El Nacional. Her first novel, It Would Be Night in Caracas, critically acclaimed by critics and readers, won the Grand Prix de l’Héroïne Madame Figaro and the International Literary Prize. Considered one of the best books of the year by NPR and Time, it is being translated into twenty-six languages and has sold movie rights. In 2019, Karina Sainz Borgo was chosen one of the 100 most creative people in Forbes magazine. El Tercer País is her latest novel.

ALMUDENA SÁNCHEZ Almudena Sánchez is a writer and journalist born in Mallorca, Spain, in 1985. La Acústica de los Iglús was her first book of short stories, which has already reached its eighth edition and has also been published in Argentina. Some of her short stories have been translated into English and published in Two Lines magazine. In 2019 she was selected among the ten best young writers in Spain by AECID. Her latest novel is titled Fármaco.

JAMES SCORER James Scorer is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on Latin American urban imaginaries, particularly those of Buenos Aires, and on Latin American cultural production, especially photography and comics. He is the author of City in Common: Culture and Community in Buenos Aires and the editor of Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America. He is also co-editor of Comics and Memory in Latin America.

KARLA SUÁREZ Karla Suárez a Cuban writer, born in Havana in 1969. She studied classical guitar and has a degree in electronic engineering. She is the author of four novels and four short stories. Her books have received many international awards, including the Lengua de Trapo Prize for her 1999 debut novel Silencios. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines published in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. In 2007, she was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the Bogotá39 writers, which presents the best Latin American authors under the age of 40. Havana Year Zero is her third novel and has obtained the Prix Carbet of the Caribbean and Tout-Monde and the Insular Book Prize, both in France. It is her first book to be published in English (2021).

LORENZO SILVA Lorenzo Silva is a Spanish writer born in 1966 in Madrid, Spain. He is the author of El Alquimista Impaciente (Nadal Prize) The Faint-Hearted Bolshevik. Both novels were made into films. In October 2012, he was awarded the Premio Planeta de Novela for La Marca del Meridiano. An author of immense popularity among readers, he has also published titles such as Tantos Lobos, Ahí afuera, Donde uno cae and Diario de la Alarma. His latest work is Castellano. Several of his books have been translated into fourteen languages.

ANNA SOLER-PONT Born in 1968 in Barcelona, Anna Soler-Pont studied Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Barcelona while she worked in publishing. In 1992 she founded Pontas Literary & Film Agency, representing a wide range of authors and maintaining its focus on multicultural projects. In 2005 she published an anthology of African stories and legends entitled A Marvellous Book of African Stories for Children. In 2007, she published the book Rastres de Sàndal, co-authored with Asha Miró, which in 2014 was made into a film directed by Maria Ripoll.

QHAN ZHOU WU Quan Zhou Wu is an illustrator and graphic novelist, born in Algeciras in 1989. In 2015 she debuted with her book Gazpacho Agridulce, a biography about her Chinese-Andalusian world, which was followed by Andaluchinas por el Mundo, Gazpacho Agridulce 2, El gran Libro de los Niños extraordinarios and Gente de aquí. She studied in Madrid and graduated in England.

MARGARYTA YAKOVENKO Margaryta Yakovenko was born in Ukraine in 1992, but at the age of seven she moved to Murcia, Spain. She is a writer and a journalist specialized in International Politics. She has been an editor and writer at PlayGround and she currently works at El País. Her first novel, Desencajada, has aroused extraordinary enthusiasm among readers.

JESSICA ZAFRA Jessica Zafra is a Filipino fiction writer, columnist, editor, publisher, and former television and radio show host. Her most popular books are the Twisted series, a collection of her essays as a columnist for the newspaper Manila Standard Today, as well as from her time as editor and publisher of the magazine Flip. She currently writes a weekly column for InterAksyon.com. She lives in Manila, where she is working on her first novel.

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