Verónica Zondek

(Santiago de Chile, 1953)  

Latest books of poetry: Por gracia de hombre (2008); La ciudad que habito (2012); Instalaciones de la memoria (2013); Nomeolvides: Flores para nombrar la ignominia (2014); Sedimentos (2015);Cold fire (2016); Ojo de agua (2019); Hola ratón con cola (2022); El esplendor de la granada (2023); Manto azul (2024). Current translations:  Red Doc, by Anne Carson (2017); La Muerte de los Padres, by Anne Sexton (2018); Zumbido, by Emily Dickinson (2018); The World is Round, by Gertrude Stein (2020); Morgue and Other Poems, by Gottfried Benn (2021); This Great Unknowing, by Denise Levertov (2025).

Other activities involving the participant:

The Poetry Room
Gabriela Mistral: 80 years since the Nobel Prize

Maite Carranza

Invitado de Honor

Maite Carranza was born in Barcelona in 1958. She studied anthropology and worked as a teacher and TV screenwriter while also focusing on literature.
Her extensive career spans over 70 books many of them young adult novels, and her trilogy La Guerra de les Bruixes translated into over 30 languages (War of the Witches in English), has brought her international renown as well.
Her groundbreaking, socially engaged work – with titles such as Paraules emmetzinades (‘Poisoned words’) – has been recognised with several awards; including the Spanish National Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award, the Critics’ Award, the Cervantes Chico Award and the Edebé Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. This year, she was nominated for the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the most prestigious international children’s and young adult literature award, as well as for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
She combines literature with screenwriting, talks and lectures, and she strives to defend authors’ rights. She also contributed to the animated feature film L’Olívia i el terratrèmol invisible, based on her novel La pel·lícula de la vida. The Catalan film received an award at the Festival d’Annecy 2025 and will première this autumn.
 

Other activities involving the participant:

One Thousand Young People with Maite Carranza

Bruno Vieira Amaral

(Portugal, 1978)
Collaborator in the magazine Ler, the newspaper Expresso and Rádio Observador. He made his debut with the essay Guia para 50 Personagens da Ficção Portuguesa in 2013, published by Guerra e Paz. His first novel, As Primeiras Coisas (Quetzal, 2013), was awarded the PEN Clube Narrative Prize, the Fernando Namora Literary Prize, the Time Out and the José Saramago Literary Award in 2015. In 2016 he was selected as one of the Ten New Voices from Europe, by the platform Literature Across Frontiers.
His second novel, Hoje Estarás Comigo no Paraíso (Quetzal, 2017), received the 2016-2017 Tabula Rasa Prize in the fiction category, and took second place in the 2018 Oceans Prize. In 2018 his best scattered texts were gathered, in the volume Manobras de Guerrilha, and in 2020 he published the book of short stories Uma Ida ao Motel, awarded the following year with the Camilo Castelo Branco /APE Short Story Grand Prize. In 2021 he published Marginal Integrated, biography of the writer José Cardoso Pires. A year later, he met in O Segundo Coração a series of chronicles about the past and memory. In 2024 he published his third novel, Toda a Gente Tem um Plan . The rights to his books have been sold to several countries, including Spain, Italy, Brazil, Hungary, Egypt and Israel.

Other activities involving the participant:

The Everyday Life in the Periphery

Claudia Neira Bermúdez

She has been the director of the Central America Festival since 2015, where she also coordinates the content curation. She combines her cultural management work with her experience in strategic communication and public relations.
Previously, she worked as an editor in media in Nicaragua; as a communication expert in the United States and Nicaragua, where she founded, in 2005, Crea Comunicaciones.

She holds a master's degree in strategic communication and public relations at Marshall University, West Virginia, United States. She is a fellow from the V class of the Central American Leadership Initiative (CALI, associated with the Aspen Institute). She has been a mentor at Voces Vitales and has been part of various cultural, business and leadership initiatives in Central America.

Nicaraguan born in Brazil, to a Peruvian father and a Nicaraguan mother. Since 2022, she has lived in Madrid.

Other activities involving the participant:

Central America in Mexico, and Mexico in Central America: a literary round trip
Latin America Viva

Miguel Pita

He holds a PhD in genetics and cell biology from the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he works as a professor and researcher. He combines his university activity with scientific dissemination, work that he develops from very different fields, not only the literary one. For more than a decade he has been leading the section "La noticia científica de la semana” in the mythical radio sports program Tiempo de Juego, where a purely scientific space is reserved for him between the action of football matches. As a writer, he is the author of the book of divulgation El ADN dictador (Ariel, 2017), in which he exposes how genetics decisively influences human life, and reflects on which traits may or may not be conditioned by our DNA. His interest in explaining complex scientific issues with simplicity led him to publish Un día en la vida de un virus (Periférica, 2020), a clear and informative approach to the role of viruses and pandemics in our society. This year he will publish El cerebro enamorado (Periférica, 2025), a book that dissects the most powerful feeling that human beings experience from a scientific perspective, and that demonstrates, with rigor, that love is not a magical phenomenon nor dictated by the gods, but a fascinating and transient state that occurs in our neurons.
His interest in communication goes beyond books and radio, as he has also directed short films and documentaries that integrate science and audiovisual creation as complementary ways to bring knowledge to the general public. He also teaches the edition of the course online "Introducción a la genética y la evolución” on the EdX platform; he has published articles in media such as El País, Muy Interesante and The Conversation, and has participated in international conferences and debates of different profiles (Banco Sabadell Futures Debate, Hay Festival Peru, Hay Festival Mexico, Protagonists 2030 in Chile, etc.); where he is always ready to defend the relevant role of scientific knowledge in society.

Other activities involving the participant:

Genetic editing: the power to rewrite life

Ana Fuente

(Ciudad de México, 1984)

Estudió la licenciatura en lengua y literaturas hispánicas en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Ha sido beneficiaria del apoyo Jóvenes Creadores del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) y del Programa de Estímulo a la Creación y Desarrollo Artístico (PECDA BC) en la categoría Creadores con trayectoria. Ha publicado cuento y ensayo en revistas y en diversas antologías publicadas en México y el extranjero. Es autora de los libros Chicharrón de oso y algunos cuentos del fracaso (FETA 2018), Mosaico de lo insólito (ICBC, 2021) y Cicatrices (BUAP, 2023). En 2019 recibió el Premio Nacional Dolores Castro de Narrativa por La Ley Campoamor (IMAC, 2019; Nitro Press, 2023) y en 2024 recibió en Premio Estatal de Literatura con el libro de cuentos Territoria. Imparte talleres, se dedica a la traducción y la corrección de estilo. Baja California la adoptó desde hace trece años.
 

Other activities involving the participant:

The penalty: 11 steps to glory

Jorge Gonzalvo

(Zaragoza, Spain)

He is a writer, editor, screenwriter and cultural manager.  What he loves most about writing is teaching people how to create stories, which is why he has been teaching courses and workshops on the subject for over 20 years. As an author he has published several illustrated albums in the company of illustrators such as Cecilia Varela or Elena Odriozola. His best-known works are: Te regalo un cuento (Lóguez), Despedida de tristeza (Lóguez) and Tropecista (Bárbara Fiore). In May 2025 he plans to publish an illustrated album about the life of María de Luna, which will be accompanied by the images of Marina Velasco. 

He is a founding member of the Atrapavientos Association, awarded with the National Prize for the Promotion of Reading 2022 granted by the Ministry of Culture of Spain. Atrapavientos is a Spanish organization with more than fifteen years of experience and committed to promoting reading, especially among the youngest, but also in rural areas or with groups at risk of reading exclusion. Atrapavientos has collaborated with entities such as the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID), the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico, the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica, the Cultural Center of Spain in Tegucigalpa, the Instituto Cervantes, Ministry of Culture of Spain, CaixaForum, Ibercaja Foundation, Writers School, Aldeas Infantile, Believe in Art or Atades, among others. 

Some of the most recognized reader development projects of Atrapavientos are: Libros que Importan (a book exchange in public spaces that was created in 2016 and that to date has connected more than 15,600 readers from almost a hundred Spanish towns and also from Mexico, Sweden and the Netherlands), Plantadores de Historias, Cuentos al Viento, RecoLectores (an initiative of reader development in rural areas), La Asombrosa Máquina de Generar Historias, Leer es un Vicio (possibly the worst campaign to promote reading in the world) or Magia en los Libros. To date, about 85 thousand people have participated in the activities of Atrapavientos during its fifteen years of trajectory. 

Other activities involving the participant:

Workshop-Talk: “Does the algorithm dream of electric verses?”

Kiko Amat

Invitado de Honor

Kiko Amat (Sant Boi, 1971) is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction. Published by Anagrama, his books include El día que me vaya no se lo diré a nadie (The Day I Leave I Won’t Tell Anyone) (2003): ‘An intense, angry and stylised tale, like a Small Faces single’ (Ramón Vendrell, El Periódico); Cosas que hacen BUM (Things that go BOOM) (2007): ‘With invigorating humour, Kiko Amat evokes the desperate attempts of an anti-hero to be accepted by the clan. A generational self-portrait full of mockery and nostalgia’ (Ariane Singer, Le Monde); Rompepistas (Trackbreaker) (2009): ‘A Trainspotting (almost) without drugs. A Catcher in the Rye et in the La Seda factory. A Graham Swift without Guinness (but with Estrella). An excellent novel’ (Carlos Zanón); Eres el mejor, Cienfuegos (You’re the Best, Cienfuegos) (2012): ‘In literature, at least, Amat is probably the best there is’ (Javier Calvo); Antes del huracán (Before the Hurricane) (2018): ‘Extraordinary. This novel belongs to the realm of high-brow literature’ (Jordi Gracia, El País); Revancha (Revenge) (2021): ‘Tough, fast, violent – Revancha is a perfect bullet, the literary reverse of hypocrisy’ (Lucía Lijtmaer). He is also the author of the handbook Los enemigos (The Enemies) (2022): ‘A book that combines humour, seriousness and bile to reflect on the value of certain “bad” feelings’ (Carmen López, El Periódico de España). His latest novel is Dick o la tristeza del sexo (Dick or the Sadness of Sex) (2025). He is also the author of two non-fiction books, Mil violines (A Thousand Violins) and Chap chap.
He currently co-writes and co-hosts the podcast Pop y muerte on Radio Primavera Sound.

Other activities involving the participant:

Sexual awakening
Perreo, electro, and punk in literature

Katya Adaui

(Lima, 1977) 

Adoro los cuentos porque son viajes cortos, pero de largo plazo. 
Aun cuando no estoy escribiendo, estoy escribiendo.
Encuentro consuelo en el lenguaje y en pensar al otro desde sus contradicciones.
Soy autora de los libros de cuentos Un nombre para tu isla y Geografía de la oscuridad, con Páginas de Espuma; Aquí hay icebergs y Algo se nos ha escapado. Y de las novelas Quiénes somos ahora y Nunca sabré lo que entiendo. También escribí cuatro libros infantiles, entre ellos, Otra cosa.
Vivo en Buenos Aires: hay más librerías que McDonald´s. Dicto talleres. Y enseño en la carrera artes de la escritura de la Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA).

Other activities involving the participant:

Annual International Storytellers Conference

Giselle Etcheverry Walker

Giselle Etcheverry Walker is a curator of literary and cultural projects, as well as a freelance editor. She holds a degree in Philosophy and has an MBA in Business Management and Cultural Institutions. 

From 2004 to 2009 she worked in the Prisa Group’s literary agency La Oficina del Autor. From 2009 to 2019 she was deputy director of the Santillana Foundation (Culture), where she participated in the development and consolidation of projects such as the Formentor Literary Conversations (Mallorca), the Congress of Cultural Journalism (Santander), the Forum of Cultural Industries (Madrid) and the Philosophy Festival (Madrid), among others.

As an editor, she has edited Hambre de realidad, by David Shields (CdT, 2017), El arte de perder. Una vida en cartas, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (CdT, 2018) and Decantaciones kantianas, by Ezra Heymann (Guillermo Editores, 2019). For more than ten years she was co-editor of the literary portal El Boomeran(g).

She has been curator of festival La Noche de los Libros de Madrid in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and curator of the editions of Bloomsday Madrid-Dublin 2023 and 2024, an event for celebrate Ulysses by James Joyce. Since 2020 until 2024, she was curator of El pecado de leer [The sin of reading], a series of literary events of Alianza Editorial Publishing House. Currently she is Head of Thinking and Literary programme at the Contemporánea Condeduque cultural centre (Madrid). 

In 2022 she contributed to the design of the literary programme of Spain’s Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, as well as the contents of the pavilion and the programmes with German festivals and universities that hosted authors from Spain throughout that year. In 2024 she worked on the design of the content of the literary and pavilion programmes for Spain’s presence as Guest of Honour at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. She is a member of Policrits, Red de Pensamiento Crítico Iberoamericano Contemporáneo.

Other activities involving the participant:

Award Ceremony Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize 2025