Huda Al-Naemi

(Qatar) 

Writer, doctor in medical physics, she worked for years in the scientific field before devoting herself completely to literature. She received the Qatar National Prize in Healthcare Medical Sciences (2018). Precocious, both in her literary and journalistic production, her first collection of short stories  Al-Mikhala saw the light in 1997. It was followed by Untha , 1998, and Abatil , 2000. Two years later she would publish Ayn tara, a compilation of articles that appeared in various Qatari and Arabic newspapers. In 2010, she published a new anthology of short stories, Hala tushbihuna, which was followed in 2012 by a children's play, al-Naba al-dhahabi . She has been part of a good number of technical commissions and juries under the Ministry of Culture of Qatar, especially for the awarding of prizes for theatrical work. In the international scene, she was a member of the jury of the Arabic Novel Prize, known as Arab Booker, in its 2012 edition, as well as that of Katara, also for the novel written in Arabic, of the year 2018.
In 2021, she published a new collection of short stories, Qumut (Diapers), set in the shops of goods and clothes for babies in the seventies and eighties of the last century. Among her most recent works we find a fictionalized autobiography, Hina jabuhu al-najil   2023, and her novel Zaafarana, 2024.

The most recent sample of his literary work we have in the Huda wa Kalila collection (Huda and Kalila), published by the Hamad ben Khalifa University Press, Doha, in 2025, from where the short stories presented in the summer publication of the magazine have been extracted from Banipal.

Other activities involving the participant:

Echoes of FIL

Jan Carson

(Ireland)

Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two microfiction collections. Her novel, The Fire Starters  won the European Literature Prize for Ireland, in 2019. Her most recent novel, The Raptures, was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year awards. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday (UK) in April 2024, and by Scribner (USA) in July 2024. Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE. She is a 2025 Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen's University Belfast, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first play, an adaptation of the children's classic The Velveteen Rabbit, was produced by the Replay theatre company at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 2025. Her next novel is Few and Far Between, which is to be published in early 2026.

Other activities involving the participant:

Territory of Affections, Silences and Encounters
Echoes of FIL

Andrés Montero

(Santiago de Chile, 1990)
He is a writer and oral narrator, author of Tony Ninguno, Taguada, La muerte viene estilando and El año en que hablamos con el mar, among others. He has received several literary prizes in Chile and abroad, among which the X Iberoamerican Prize of Novel Elena Poniatowska of Mexico City stands out. His books have been published in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Greece and Denmark. Together with Nicole Castillo, he integrates the oral narration company La Matrioska; he directs the Literature and Oral Arts School Casa Contada, and hosts the television program Los cuenteros en ruta.
 

Other activities involving the participant:

Latin America Viva

Laksmi Pamuntjak

(Indonesia, 1971) 

Award-winning bilingual Indonesian novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, food critic and literary curator. She writes widely on culture and politics for Indonesian and international publications including opinion pieces for The Guardian. 

Pamuntjak’s debut novel, Amba/The Question of Red, has been translated into several languages and won Germany’s LiBeraturpreis in 2016. The novel was also on the shortlist of Indonesia’s Khatulistiwa Literary Award and #1 on Germany’s Weltempfaenger list of the best works of fiction from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Arab World translated into German. 

In March 2024, The Economist named Amba/The Question of Red one of Six Books to Read about Indonesia.

The movie adaptation of Pamuntjak’s second novel, Aruna dan Lidahnya (published in the US as The Birdwoman’s Palate), won two Citra awards, Indonesia’s version of the Oscars. The movie had its European premiere at the 2019 Berlinale International Film Festival and is playing on Netflix. 
 
In 2018, Pamuntjak’s first English novel, Fall Baby, was published in Germany under the title Herbstkind. A year later, the original version was published by Penguin Random House SEA and won the 2020 Singapore Book Award for Best Literary Work. 

In June 2025, The Book of Mating, the English translation of Pamuntjak’s short story collection, Kitab Kawin (transl. Annie Tucker), won the 2025-2026 Humanities in Translation (HiT) Prize. A few short stories in the collection have been published in various literary journals, with “Anna and Her Daughter’s Partner” being one of Words Without Borders’ 5 Top Fiction Picks of 2022. 

The Book of Mating will be published in the US by Northwestern University Press in Fall 2026.

As a poet, Laksmi has published two poetry collections, with Ellipsis appearing in the 2005 Herald UK Books of the Year list. In 2012, she became the Indonesian representative at Poetry Parnassus, UK’s largest poetry festival in conjunction with the London Olympics. 

As a food writer, her most notable contribution to Indonesian culinary history is five editions of the Jakarta Good Food Guide series, published for the first time in 2001. The series is widely acknowledged as Indonesia’s first independent and literary good food guide.

Along with her poems, short stories and essays, Pamuntjak’s writing on art has appeared in numerous international literary journals. In 2022, she co-curated a literary exhibition in Jakarta to celebrate the centennial of the great Indonesian poet Chairil Anwar. Between 2009 and 2011, she served as an international jury member for the Amsterdam-based Prince Claus Award, an international philanthropy organization. 

Pamuntjak’s latest work (2024) is Selaput Biru (Blue Iris). Begun and completed during her Fall 2023 residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, it is a memoir of sorts based on her reflections on art and life. 

Between August and December 2024, she was Literaturhaus Zurich Writer-in-Residence.

Laksmi Pamuntjak’s body of work can be accessed through her personal website, www.laksmipamuntjak.com

Other activities involving the participant:

Echoes of FIL

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

Carlota Gurt

Invitado de Honor

Carlota 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

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:

The Pleasure of Reading Gala

Liliana Blum

(México, 1974)

Es autora de las novelas Pandora (Tusquets, 2015), El monstruo pentápodo (Tusquets, 2017), Cara de Liebre (Seix Barral, 2020), El extraño caso de Lenny Goleman (Planeta, 2022) y Ráfaga roja (Seix Barral, 2025), y de los libros de cuentos La maldición de Eva (2002), ¿En qué se nos fue la mañana? (2007), Vidas de catálogo (2007), The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (2008), Yo sé cuando expira la leche (2011), Tristeza de los cítricos (2019), Todas hemos perdido algo (Tusquets, 2020) y Un descuido cósmico (Tusquets, 2023). Sus escritos son parte de las antologías El crimen como una de las bellas artes (2002), Atrapadas en la madre (2006), El espejo de Beatriz (2009), Óyeme con los ojos: de sor Juana al siglo XXI (2010) y Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (2012).

Other activities involving the participant:

The literature that disturbs

Irene Reyes-Noguerol

Born in Seville, in November 1997. She graduated in Hispanic philology with an Extraordinary Prize and a master's degree in secondary education from the University of Seville. She has completed a Creative Writing Workshop with the Camilo José Cela University, in Madrid.

Winner of 57 literary awards and selected by the magazine Granta as one of the 25 best young storytellers in Spanish. Co-author in 16 anthologies and author of the short story books Caleidoscopios (Editions in Flight, 2016) and  Homero y otros dioses (Maclein and Parker, 2018).
She currently works as a teacher of Spanish language and literature in public secondary schools.

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