Conversations in Granada 2016
Since 2015, the Granada UNESCO City of Literature, which depends on Granada City Council’s arts department, became a member of the Granada Book Fair organising committee.
In 2016, for the second year running, Granada UNESCO City of Literature designed a special open stand on the Book Fair site at Puerta Real, 10 m long and 4 m deep, conceived as an open space for reading for visitors to the fair, and full of information on all the programme’s activities.
For the second year running, we organised our season of Literary Conversations (“Conversations in Granada”) during the fair, to strengthen our programming with leading writers from Spain and abroad.
In 2015 those invited were Sjón (Iceland), Rachid Boudjedra and Souad-Hadj-Ali (Algeria), Óscar Hahn (Chile) and the Spanish writers Antonio Gamoneda, Luis Muñoz, David Trueba, Andrés Neuman, Miguel Ángel Arcas, Cristina Morales and Erika Martínez. In 2016 the programme maintained the seasons that began the previous (“Conversations in Granada”, “Emerging Names”) and linked to the theme for the fair, “Informing People About Science”, as well as commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of Cervantes.
The venue chosen for the conversations was the Centro Federico García Lorca, striving to strengthen the links between the city’s new space for the arts and the Book Fair events.
Programme 2nd Edition of Literary Conversations
Granada UNESCO City of Literature
ÁNGELES MORA in conversation with MIGUEL ÁNGEL GARCÍA
23th April, Centro Federico García Lorca
JEAN CANAVAGGIO in conversation with PATRICIA MARÍN
25th April, Centro Federico García Lorca
CRISTIAN CRUSAT in conversation with PAUL VIEJO
26th April, Espacio Central de Puerta Real
JORGE WAGENSBERG in conversation with ERIKA MARTÍNEZ
27th April, Centro Federico García Lorca
Ángeles Mora, who won the Spanish Poetry Prize and Critics’ Prize in for her poetry collection Ficciones para una autobiografía (Bartleby), was born in Rute (Córdoba province) but has lived in Granada since 1980, where she obtained a degree in Hispanic philology.
She published her first poetry collection, Pensando que el camino iba derecho, in 1982, followed by La canción del olvido in 1985 and La guerra de los treinta años in 1989, winning the Rafael Alberti Poetry Prize for the latter. In 2000 she published Caligrafía de ayer, in 2001 Contradicciones, pájaros (City of Melillia Prize and translated into Italian as Contraddizioni, uccelli, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2005), and in 2008 Bajo la alfombra (Visor). There are also two anthologies of her work: Antología poética (1982–1995), edited by Luis Muñoz, 1995, and ¿Las mujeres son mágicas?, with a prologue by Miguel Ángel García, 2006. Also in 2005: Antología poéticafor Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.
Miguel Ángel García is a lecturer on Spanish literature at the University of Granada. His books include: Vicente Aleixandre, la poesía y la historia (Granada, Comares, 2001); El Veintisiete en vanguardia: Hacia una lectura histórica de las poéticas moderna y contemporánea, (Valencia, Pre-Textos, 2001), a study for which he won the first International Gerardo Diego Award for Research in Literature; La poética de lo invisible en Juan Ramón Jiménez (Granada, Granada Provincial Council, 2002; Un aire oneroso: Ideologías literarias de la modernidad en España (Siglos XIX-XX) (Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 2010); and La literatura y sus demonios: Leer la poesía social (Madrid, Castalia, 2012).
Jean Canavaggio (b. Paris, 1936), is a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Paris and one of the most highly reputed Hispanists in the world. A full member of the Hispanic Society, correspondent of the Real Academia Española and Real Academia de Historia, he has published Cervantes (winner of the 1986 Goncourt biography prize) and Cervantès dramaturge: un théâtre à naître. He has coordinated a history of Spanish literature, and directed the new French translation of the prose works of Cervantes for the Pléiade Library imprint of the Gallimard publishing house
Patricia Marín Cepeda (Madrid, 1981) es Doctora en Filología Hispánica por la Universidad de Valladolid. Durante la última década, ha estudiado y dado a conocer textos literarios inéditos del Siglo de Oro desde la desde la perspectiva de la historia de la Corte, de la historia de la literatura y de la lingüística forense. Su publicación más reciente es la monografía Cervantes y la Corte de Felipe II. Escritores en el entorno del cardenal Ascanio Colonna (1560-1608), Madrid, Polifemo, 2015. En dicho estudio, se traza por primera vez la historia del círculo de amigos escritores de Cervantes en relación con las facciones cortesanas y la política de Felipe II. Ha impartido clases en la Universidad de Valladolid (2007-2009), University of Cincinati (2010-11), Università degli Studi di Roma Tre (2011-2013), Universidad de Jaén (2014) y ha sido investigadora postdoctoral en el Departamento de Humanidades de la Universidad Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona. Actualmente desarrolla su labor docente en el Departamento de Filología de la Universidad de Burgos.
Cristian Crusat Schretzmayer was born in Málaga in 1983. He studied literature at the Madrid Complutense University and applied linguistics at Menéndez Pelayo International University in Santander. He obtained a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Amsterdam. He has had four collections of short stories published by Pre-Textos: Estatuas (2006); Tranquilo en tiempos de guerra (2010); Breve teoría del viaje y el desierto, (2011; European Union Prize for Literature in 2013); and Solitario empeño (2015), as well as having his work included in the anthology Cuento español actual: 1992–2012 (Cátedra, 2014). He is also the author of the essay “Vidas de vidas: Una historia no académica de la biografía” (Páginas de Espuma, 2015). In 2012 he translated (with Rocío Rosa) and published the articles and criticism of Marcel Schwob in El deseo de lo único: Teoría de la ficción (Páginas de Espuma, 2012).
Paul Viejo (b. 1978) is the author of the short-story collections Los ensimismados (Páginas de Espuma, 2011), the novel La madera y la ceniza (Universidad Popular José Hierro, 2003; Francisco Ayala Fiction Novel Prize), the poetry collection Extraña forma de memoria (UCM, 2002; Blas de Otero prize), the literary monograph Sherlock Holmes: Biografía (Páginas de Espuma, 2003), and the play Quinta Avenida esquina con qué (Ñaque, 2006; 9th Young Drama Award). He has translated into Spanish the Correspondencia 1899-1904 between Chekhov and Olga Knipper (Páginas de Espuma, 2008) and prepared the complete edition of Diario de un escritor (Páginas de Espuma, 2010) by Fjodor Dostoyevski, and Chekhov’s Cuentos completos in four volumes (Páginas de Espuma, 2013–2016). He also edited the complete poems of Ana Rossetti, La ordenación (José Manuel Lara Foundation, 2004), and the poetry of Elsa López A mar abierto (Hiperión, 2006).
Jorge Wagensberg (b. Barcelona, 1948) has taught theory of irreversible processes in the physics faculty at the University of Barcelona since 1981. A writer, lecturer, editor and museologist of international renown, Wagensberg is one of the most significant disseminators of science in Spain. In 1991 he created (and, until 2005, directed) the science museum of La Caixa Foundation in Barcelona (known as CosmoCaixa since 2004), a world benchmark in science museums and voted the best museum in Europe in 2006.
As a writer, he has published a score of books, a hundred or more research papers and countless articles in the press. He has developed the aphorism genre with great aplomb, to become one of its leading exponents in Spain. His books include Ideas sobre la complejidad del mundo (Tusquets, 1985), Ideas para la imaginación impura: 53 reflexiones en su propia sustancia (Tusquets, 1998), Yo, lo superfluo y el error. Historias de vida o muerte sobre ciencia o literatura (Tusquets, 2009), Las raíces triviales de lo fundamental (Tusquets, 2010) and Más árboles que ramas: 1116 aforismos para navegar por la realidad (Tusquets, 2012).
Erika Martínez (b. Jaén, 1979). With her first poetry collection, Color carne (Pre-Textos, 2009), she won the Radio Nacional de España Young Poets Prize. Her second book, El falso techo (Pre-Textos, 2013), was chosen as one of the five poetry collections of the year by the critics of El Cultural and was nominated for the Critics’ Prize. She has also published a book of aphorisms Lenguaraz (Pre-Textos, 2011) and her work has appeared in the anothologies L’aforisma in Spagna: Tedeci scrittori di aforismo contemporanei (ed. Fabrizio Caramagna, Turin, 2014) and Pensar por lo breve: Aforística española de entresiglos (ed. José Ramón González, Trea, 2013). In 2015 she published Diez intemperies bajo techo to celebrate the opening of the Centro Federico García Lorca in Granada.
