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FIL Literature
Destinação Brazil
Destinação Brazil
A diverse and contrasting literature is written in Brazil. The voices of this edition make up two dialogue tables that will invite readers to explore big cities, small towns and new horizons. The vast territory that makes up the country and its multiplicity of genres, groups and languages give Brazilian literature a unique and interesting character for readers who are looking for contrasts and surprises.
The participants of this cycle come from and portray regions outside the major cities, their narrative brings new cultural, ethnic and geographical perspectives: Luciany Aparecida, narrator who tells us about gender, courage, and color, and who makes visible deep traces in the current Brazilian population; Eliane Marques, poet and novelist whose raw and violent writing portrays the life of generations of enslaved women; Monique Malcher, voice of resilient women and lives in constant transformation; Vitor Martins, narrator and illustrator whose work invites us to overcome insecurities and let ourselves be known beyond the obvious and Micheliny Verunschk, a writer whose most recent work explores language, memory, belonging, and time while telling a story of a past fiercely reached by the future.
Participants: Monique Malcher, Eliane Marques, Micheliny Verunschk
Moderator: Brenda Ríos
Monique Malcher
(Brazil, 1988)
Monique Malcher is a writer, journalist and visual artist, born in Santarém, west of Pará. She has a master's degree in anthropology and an interdisciplinary doctorate in human sciences, with a specialization in gender studies. Her first book, Flor de gume (Editorial Moinhos), won the 2021 Jabuti Prize for Literature in the short story category.
She is the second woman from the north of Brazil to win a Jabuti Prize for literature. Flor de gume will also be published soon under the title Flor de filo by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, in Mexico. His first novel, Degola (2025), will be published by the Companhia das Letras.
Other activities involving the participant:
Annual International Storytellers Conference
Eliane Marques
(Brazil, 1970)
Eliane Marques, born on the border between Brazil and Uruguay, is a novelist, poet, translator and psychoanalyst. She has published Louças de familia, her first novel (Autêntica Contemporânea), São Paulo Literature Prize 2023; or poço das marianas (2022 Minuano Prize for Literature); and se alguém o pano (Açorians Prize for Literature 2016), Relicário, and the translations Pregão de Marimorena and Cabeças de Ifé (2022 AGES Award). In March 2025 she released the poetry book Sílex by the Editorial Fósforo - Círculo de Poemas. She is currently working on her new novel, Guanxuma, to be released in 2026 by the publishing house Autêntica Contemporânea. For many years he coordinated the Publishing house Escola de Poesia Amefricana and the Orisun Oro label, aimed at the translation and publication of books by Amefrican poets. She has poems published in American magazines The Common (No. 20) and Prairie Schooner (volume 95), in the Cuban magazine Casa de las Américas and in the Brazilian magazines Cult and Piauí, among others. She was a columnist for the newspaper Zero Hora, an important information vehicle of the south of Brazil. She graduated in pedagogy and law and holds a master's degree in public law, specializing in “Constitution, Politics and Economics”, in addition to working as an External Control Auditor of the Court of Auditors of the State of Rio Grande do Sul.
Other activities involving the participant:
São Paulo Prize for Literature
The Poetry Room
Micheliny Verunschk
Nació en 1972 en Recife, en el estado brasileño de Pernambuco. Escritora e historiadora, es autora de libros de cuentos, poesía y novelas, entre ellos Nossa Teresa: vida e morte de uma santa suicida (Patuá, 2014), ganador del Premio São Paulo de Literatura; O som do rugido da onça (Companhia das Letras, 2021; trad.: El sonido del rugido de la onza, Elefanta, 2025), que obtuvo el Premio Jabuti a la mejor novela literaria y el tercer lugar en el Premio Oceanos; Caminhando com os mortos (Companhia das Letras, 2023), ganador del Premio Oceanos; y Depois do trovão (Companhia das Letras, 2025).
Brenda Ríos
Writer. She teaches creative writing workshops in different spaces of the country.
She is a member of the National System of Creators 2024-2027.
Among her most recent books is Ensayo 4, compilation and prologue, Direction of Literature, UNAM, 2024 (dissemination). She has been published in Brazil, Colombia, Spain. Cubo de Rubik (Camelot America, 2018) and Olvidar a nadie (Ediciones Periféricas, 2022) together with Mercedes Álvarez, are her chronicle books. Her essay books: Hombres de verdad and Raras ensayos sobre el amor, lo femenino, la voluntad creadora, were included in various lists of the best books in their respective years of appearance in different national media. She was ed for the writing residency at Casa Estudio Cien Años de Soledad, in 2023.
Other activities involving the participant:
The Poetry Room
Southern literature
The other side of the essay
Thursday, December 04
19:30 to 20:20
FIL Literature
Annual International Storytellers Conference
Annual International Storytellers Conference
The International Storytellers Conference is a space to celebrate the brevity, magic and intensity of short stories. This nineteenth edition brings together authors from different languages, traditions and geographies who share the same passion: to narrate the essential with a few powerful words.
Family ties, memory, indifference, home, desire, body, grief, motherhood, and loss make up the stories of eleven writers who come together to reveal the vitality and diversity of contemporary storytelling, and invite us to explore unique worlds, to explore the intimate, the social, the imagined and the lived, all in the precise and powerful space of the story.
The three dialogue tables will be moderated by the Mexican writer Alberto Chimal, who, in addition to collaborating with the selection of participants, will take the helm of the conversations between authors and readers.
Participants: Carlota Gurt, Alejandra Kamiya, Monique Malcher, Xue Mo
Moderator: Alberto Chimal
Carlota Gurt
Invitado de HonorCarlota Gurt, born in Barcelona in 1976, has been a translator for more than ten years, and in another life, she worked as a producer for the theatre company La Fura dels Baus and the Festival Temporada Alta. She juggles her real life and her literary life and contributes to various media outlets. Her work includes the short story collection Cavalcarem tota la nit (2019 Mercè Rodoreda Award) and the novel Sola (2020), both of which have been translated into several languages. In 2023, she published the short story collection Biografia del foc.
Other activities involving the participant:
Of families, happy and unhappy in their own way
From where one writes
Praise (from Barcelona) for the story
Alejandra Kamiya
(Argentina)
A Abelardo Castillo, mi maestro, le gustaba la anécdota de cómo gané un concurso de cuentos de una cadena de supermercados porque deseaba el premio, un premio banal, y de cómo a partir de ganarlo pensé que podía tomarme la escritura seriamente. Luego de aquel episodio pasé por su taller y antes por el de Inés Fernández Moreno, y la publicación de mis libros llegó como por añadidura, sin que yo interviniera prácticamente. Cada paso que di fue tan natural que siento que no hubo una intención detrás, anduve como quien pasea.
Pero lo necesario y esencial no está ahí, sino en la niña callada que fui, en el hecho de que cuento entre mi familia y amigos íntimos a Borges, a Clarice Lispector, a Fernando Pessoa, a Akutagawa y desde hace unos años a Annie Ernaux, en una relación extraña y extrañada con el lenguaje, en algo que siento como avidez por el mundo y otros llaman “mirada”, y en que no puedo pensarme sin leer y escribir.
Ahora, que miro hacia atrás para escribir estas líneas, veo que es como si paseando hubiera llegado finalmente a donde debía ir.
Other activities involving the participant:
Latin America Viva
Monique Malcher
(Brazil, 1988)
Monique Malcher is a writer, journalist and visual artist, born in Santarém, west of Pará. She has a master's degree in anthropology and an interdisciplinary doctorate in human sciences, with a specialization in gender studies. Her first book, Flor de gume (Editorial Moinhos), won the 2021 Jabuti Prize for Literature in the short story category.
She is the second woman from the north of Brazil to win a Jabuti Prize for literature. Flor de gume will also be published soon under the title Flor de filo by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, in Mexico. His first novel, Degola (2025), will be published by the Companhia das Letras.
Other activities involving the participant:
Destinação Brazil
Xue Mo
(China, 1963)
Xue Mo, seudónimo de Chen Kaihong, nacido en Liangzhou, provincia de Gansu, es una de las voces más singulares de la literatura china contemporánea, y un profundo conocedor de las tradiciones culturales y espirituales de su país. A lo largo de su trayectoria ha consagrado su labor intelectual al estudio de las corrientes filosóficas y místicas que atraviesan la historia de China, con especial atención a la sabiduría popular del Oeste chino, su tierra natal.
Su obra literaria —que abarca narrativa breve, novela, poesía y ensayo— refleja una intensa conexión con las tradiciones ancestrales y desarrolla un estilo propio que fusiona elementos del realismo mágico con una aguda observación de la vida rural y la psicología del pueblo chino. Su prosa, lírica y reflexiva, integra proverbios, parábolas y enseñanzas antiguas.
Xue Mo aborda temas universales como el amor, la libertad, la muerte, el sentido de la existencia y la relación entre el ser humano y la naturaleza, construyendo un puente entre el pensamiento tradicional y la sensibilidad actual. Reconocido como figura central de la llamada Literatura del Oeste de China, sus obras han sido traducidas a varios idiomas, ampliamente difundidas en medios nacionales e internacionales, y objeto de una recepción crítica sostenida.
Su extensa producción literaria incluye también ensayos culturales que evidencian su capacidad para explorar cuestiones filosóficas y existenciales, y poesía.
Ha publicado más de 70 obras, ampliamente traducidas, distribuidas en más de 60 ediciones internacionales. El cuento El anciano de Xinjiang fue seleccionado por el diario The Guardian como uno de los cinco cuentos contemporáneos más hermosos de la literatura china, lo que subraya la universalidad y belleza de su escritura.
Actualmente, Xue Mo ocupa el cargo de vicepresidente de la Asociación de Escritores de Gansu, y es director del Instituto de Investigación Cultural Xiangba en Cantón. Además, colabora como experto principal en el Centro de Traducción Literaria e Investigación Intercultural de la Universidad de Estudios Extranjeros de Guangdong. Desempeña funciones como mentor en el Instituto de Investigación de Oncología de Medicina Tradicional en la Universidad de Medicina Tradicional China de Shanghái, así como en el Hospital de Oncología afiliado a la Universidad Fudan.
Other activities involving the participant:
A shared look at literature: stories between east and west
Alberto Chimal
Alberto Chimal (Toluca, Mexico, 1970) is a writer and professor of creative writing. In 2002 he won the National Short Story Prize, and in 2014 the Colima Narrative Prize, awarded by the National Institute of Fine Arts of his country; in 2013 his novel La torre y el jardín was a finalist of the Rómulo Gallegos International Prize; in 2019 his children's book La Distante he received the International Prize of the Cuatrogatos Foundation; in 2021 his novel La noche en la zona M he won the International Book Bank Award, and in 2024 he was awarded the FILEM International Prize for his literary career. His other works are the novels Los esclavos (2009) and The visitor (2022); a score of short story books, of which the most recent is Las estancias secretas (2024); the scripts of the films 7:19 (2016), directed by Jorge Michel Grau, and Confesiones (2023), directed by Carlos Carrera; "Funeral", an illustrated story within the Batman graphic novel: El Mundo (2021), and the fiction podcast La señal (2025). His texts have been translated into a dozen languages and have appeared in international anthologies. He lives in Mexico City; with his wife, the writer Raquel Castro, he maintains a literary dissemination channel on YouTube. In Páginas de Espuma, he has published Los atacantes (2015) and Manos de lumbre (2018).
Other activities involving the participant:
Annual International Storytellers Conference
Annual International Storytellers Conference
A shared look at literature: stories between east and west
Friday, December 05
19:30 to 21:20