Gioconda Belli

(Nicaragua, 1948) is a poet, novelist and essayist. From a very young age she participated in the revolutionary movement that overthrew Anastasio Somoza in 1979. For her critical stance against the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, she was stripped of her nationality and her assets were confiscated in 2023. The Spanish Government granted her nationality in 2024.

She won the 2023 Reina Sofía Award for Iberoamerican Poetry. Author of nine poetry books, she has also received the poetry awards: Mariano Fiallos Gil, Generación del 27, Ciudad de Melilla, Casa de las América de Cuba and Jaime Gil de Biedma. For her novels, she received the Award for Best Political Novel of the Year in Germany in 1989, and was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2001. She also received the Premio Biblioteca Breve award and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2008, the award Premio Latinoamericano La Otra Orilla in 2010, and she was nominated at the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial in 2019. In 2018, she received the Hermann Kesten PEN Award in Germany, and in 2019, the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award in The Hague for her defense of freedom of expression, human rights and women's rights.

Her works have been translated into more than 20 languages and reproduced extensively in newspapers and magazines. She is the President of the Nicaraguan chapter of PEN International; a member of the Language Academy of Nicaragua; a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy and Knight of Arts and Letters of France. She has lived in Madrid since 2022.

Kirmen Uribe

Invitado de Honor

Basque writer based in New York, is the author of two poetry books (Meanwhile take my hand and 17 segundos, both published by Visor Poesía) and four novels (Bilbao-New York-Bilbao, Lo que mueve el mundo, La hora de despertarnos juntos and La vida anterior de los delfines, all of them by Seix Barral). His works are translated into more than 20 languages. He won the Premio Nacional de Literatura (fiction) for his first novel Bilbao-New York-Bilbao, which was a global literary event. He won the Premio Nacional de la Crítica in Basque and in 2018, he received the prestigious Cullman grant from the New York Public Library for writing his latest novel.

He has published in magazines such as The New Yorker and The Paris Review, and he is currently Writer in Residence at the University of New York (NYU), where he teaches in the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) on Creative Writing in Spanish.

At the end of 2024, Visor will publish another of his works.

Other activities involving the participant:

New masculinities: deconstructing to build better men?

Antonio Altarriba

Invitado de Honor

A professor of French Literature at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), he is interested in the visual aspects of writing and the narrative potential of the image. And also in erotic literature. He has written books on this subject such as Sobre literatura potencial (1987), Comicsarías (1987), La España del tebeo (2001, 2022), Tintín y el loto rosa (2007), La paradoja del libertino (2008) and La narración figurativa (2022).

He is a scriptwriter and author of comic books such as Desfase (1986), Detective (1991), Amores locos (2005), El brillo del gato negro (2008), The Art of flying (2009), El paso del tiempo (2011), Yo, asesino (2014), El ala rota (2016), El perdón y la furia (2017), Cuerpos del delito (2017), Yo, loco (2018), Yo, mentiroso (2021), El cielo en la cabeza (2023) and of the photographic series collected in El elefante rubio (2007) and Vida salvaje (2008).

As a fiction writer, he has published El filo de la luna (1993), Cuerpos entretejidos (1996), La memoria de la nieve (2002) and Maravilla en el país de las Alicias (2010).

His works have received numerous national and international awards, and have been translated into seventeen languages.

www.antonioaltarriba.com

Karina Sainz Borgo

Born in Caracas in 1982, just as everything was about to explode. She works as a journalist specializing in cultural issues, and in 2023 she was awarded the David Gistau Prize for Journalism for her article “Aunque digáis lo contrario.” Her first novel, La hija de la española (2019, Lumen), praised by critics and readers alike, was translated and sold in 30 countries. It was up for the LiBeraturpreis, and received the Grand Prix de L’Héroïne Madame Figaro. She also won the O. Henry. Prize for her story Tijeras. She is also the author of the El tercer país (2021, Lumen, Jan Michalski Award). La isla del doctor Schubert is her latest work.

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:

One-way trip from nowhere
Inaugural Talk: The Recovery of the Lost Home… That Perhaps We Don’t Want to Recover