31.08.2018 13:54 hs.

#Filba10 | International Authors

10º Filba International Literature Festival
10-14 October 2018

Simonetta Agnello Hornby
Born and raised in Palermo, Sicily, Agnello Hornby moved to London in 1972, were she works as a lawyer. Her first novel, La Mennulara, was published in 2002 by Feltrinelli. She went on to publish many more novels, which have been translated into several languages. She won the prizes Alassio 100 libri, Forte Village Literary, Strezza and Casino de Santiago. In 2016, she received the Grand’Ufficiale dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia, handed over by the president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella.



Vanni Bianconi was born in Locarno (Switzerland) in 1977 and now lives in London. He published four poetry collections in Italian, Faura dei morti, Ora prima, Il passo dell’uomo and Sono due le parole che rimano in ore (Edizioni Casagrande).
In 2016 he published his first prose book in English, London as a Second Language (Humboldt Books),
followed in 2018 by The Loveless House, for the anthology Lucifer Over London.
His poems have been translated into various languages and published in book form, magazines and anthologies.
He was awarded the Schiller Prize, the Marazza Prize for translation, and was shortlisted for the European Poet of Freedom Prize 2016. He has translated works by W.H. Auden, William Faulkner, W. Somerset Maugham, Denton Welch, Erich Fromm.
He’s the founder and artistic director of the Babel, festival of literature and translation of Bellinzona, and of the multilingual web-magazine “Specimen. The Babel Review of Translations”.



Anne Carson
Born in Toronto in 1950, she writes essays, poems, and translations. She served as a professor of Classics at University of Michigan, NYU, Princeton and McGill. The legacy of the Classics is embodied in all of Carson’s works, from Eros the bittersweet to her most recent rewriting of Sofocle’s Antigone. It permeates her novel in verse, Autobiography of Red, a book that has been defined as “poetry that seduces even those who don’t read poetry” and was applauded by Alice Munro and Michael Ondaatje, among others. Two-time finalist of the National Book Critics Circle Prize, Carson also received the Lannan Literary Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, as well as the Guggenheim and MacArthur grants. Her work, some of the most heterodox and revolutionary pieces of contemporary literature, has captured the attention of passionate followers and critics, and achieved a singular status in the literary scene. Her unmatched creativity and the unconventionality of her artistic projects becomes more apparent with each new book.



Horacio Castellanos Moya
Born in 1957 in El Salvador, Castellanos Moya is the author of 12 novels and various collections of narratives and essays. His first novel, La diáspora (1989), was awarded the National Prize granted by the Universidad Centroamericana de El Salvador. His novel El asco. Thomas Bernhard en San Salvador (1997) gave way to controversy and threats, requiring him to flee the country. He edited journals, reviews, and worked with press agencies, mainly in Mexico City, where he lived for thirty years. He has also spent time living in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Canada, Spain and Japan. For two years, he was a writer in residence at the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, and his work has been translated into a dozen languages. The Chilean government awarded him with the Manuel Rojas Narrative Prize in 2014, and he is now a professor at the University of Iowa. Some of his published novels include La diabla en el espejo, Desmoronamiento, Tirana memoria, La sirvienta y el luchador, El sueño del retorno y Moronga. He attended Filba in 2008.



Mercedes Cebrián
Born in Madrid in 1971, she holds an MA in Hispanic Studies by the University of Pennsylvania and is a well-known author of poems, short stories and essays. Her texts appear regularly in magazines around the globe and in different lanthologies. As a translator, she has translated into Spanish works by Georges Perec, Alan Sillitoe, Miranda July and Alain de Botton. She has been writer in residence at Academia de España en Roma, Civitella Raniera Center, Ledig House Writers Residency, Fundación Valparaíso Mojacar and Fundación Santa Maddalena.



Roberto Echavarren
Born in Uruguay, Echavarren is an important poet, narrator, essayist and translator. He published over a dozen books, two of them in bilingual editions: The Espresso between Sleep and Wakefulness and The Virgin Mountain. He has won the prizes Ministerio de Cultura de Uruguay (on two occasions) and Fundación Nancy Bacelo. He has researched and written extensively about Latin American and Spanish literature.



Fikry El Azzouzi
A writer and playwright, Azzouzi was born in Teems, Belgium in 1978. He is the son of Moroccan-Berber parents. His second novel, Drarrie in de nacht (Us in the Night, 2014), won him the Ark Prize for Free Expression in 2015 and became a bestseller in Germany. As a playwright, Azzouzi carries the titles of close to ten works, among those Reizen Jihad (Jihad Tour), IJdele dagen (Many Days, which received the Flanders Performing Arts Prize) and Malcolm X, which was highlighted by critics as the tipping point of new European theater. In 2018, the company staged Drarrie in de nacht (Us in the Night). Fikry El Azzouzi works in the KVS, the Real Theater of Belgium, and created the laboratory of new scenic art together with other playwrights, performers, directors, and choreographers.



Luisgé Martín
Born in Madrid in 1962, he studied Spanish Philology at Universidad Complutense and earned an MBA at IAE. He’s the author of three short-story collections and seven novels, as well as a travel chronicle. His most recent book is the “sentimental autobiography” El amor del revés. Among the prizes he’s earned, we can mention the Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Antonio Machado and Vargas Llosa. He directs the literary magazine EÑE and this year he’s also literary director of EÑE Literature Festival in Madrid.



Fabio Morábito
He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1955. Son of Italian parents, he spent his childhood in Milán, moving to Mexico at the age of 15. He is a narrator, poet and translator, writing in Spanish. His poetry includes Lotes baldíos (1985), De lunes todo el año (1992), and Alguien de lava (2002). He published two essay collections, El viaje y la enfermedad (1984) and Los pastores sin ovejas (1995), and Caja de herramientas (1989) functions as well as an essay as a poem in prose. In addition to La vida ordenada (2000), Morábito has published a number of narrative pieces including the short story collections La lenta furia (1989), También Berlín se olvida (2004) and Grieta de fatiga (2006). He is also the author of the novel Emilio, los chistes y la muerte (2009) and the children’s book, Cuando las panteras no eran negras (1996). A number of his works have been translated to German, French, English, Italian, and Portuguese.  


Valérie Mréjen
She was born in Paris in 1969. She graduated from art school and has always been interested in the different mediums of expression that allow for the exploration of language. After writing her first vignettes, she became involved in editing a book of art. As an author, she has published the works Mon grand-pere (1999), LÁgrume (2001), Eau sauvage (2004), produced by Allia, and Foret noire (2012) and Troisième personne (2017) produced by P.O.L., both publishers based in Paris.



Edmundo Paz Soldán
Born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1967, he’s professor of Latin American Literature at Cornell University. He’s the author of eleven novels (among them, Río Fugitivo, La materia del deseo, Palacio Quemado, Los vivos y los muertos, Norte) and five short-story collections (Amores imperfectos, Billie Ruth and others). He has edited the anthologies Se habla español and Bolaño Salvaje. His work has been translated into several languages and he has received awards like the Juan Rulfo de Cuento (1997) and the Nacional de Novela de Bolivia (2002).



Carolina Sanín
Sanín was born in 1973 in Bogotá, Colombia. She is the author of the novels Todo en otra parte (2005) and Los niños (2014), a book of short stories Ponqué y otros cuentos (2010), the comedy books Yosoyu (2013) and Alto rendimiento (2016), the children’s books Dalia (2010) and La gata sola (2018), the bibliographical essay Alfonso X, el Rey Sabio (2009), and the critical anthology Pasajes de Fernando González (2015). She earned her PhD in Hispanic and Portuguese Literature at Yale. She has been a professor at SUNY Purchase and at the Universidad de los Andes. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous Colombian and international publications. She has worked as a columnist for Semana.com, El Espectador, Semana Sostenible, Credencial, Vice, and Arcadia.     



Fernando Savater
Savater has been a professor of Philosophy for more than thirty years. He has written more than 50 works, including political, literary, and philosophical essays, narrations and theater, in addition to hundreds of articles published for Spanish and international press. Some of his books have been translated to more than 20 languages. He has earned various doctoral honors from universities in Spain, Europe, and the Americas, as well as diverse awards, including the Orden del Mérito Constitucional de España, the Gran Cruz del Águila Azteca, and the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government. Ëtica para Amador, Política para Amador, and Las preguntas de la vida are some of his most well-known titles.



Irvine Welsh
I was born in Edinburgh in 1958 and I am a writer. I lived in Muirhouse, and when I was 16 I dropped out of school and took up a thousand jobs. Soon after I moved to London, following the Punk movement. At the end of the eighties, I returned to Scotland where I worked for the Edinburgh District Council. I graduated from university and I dedicated myself to writing. My most well-known novel is Trainspotting, which was made into a film twenty years ago. Some of my other novels include Filth, Porn, Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, Crime, Skagboys and The Sex Life of Siamese Twins. I have also written some short story collections, guides, and plays.



Ah Yi
Born in Ruichang, China, in 1976, his real name is Ai Guozhu. At 18, he entered police academy and worked for five years as a policeman in small province towns. His stories are usually marked by the dull daily life of these forsaken places that shaped his early years. At 26 he quit his job, moved to the city and started to work as a journalist. He is the editor of the magazine Tiannan; he published to volumes of short stories (Cuentos grises and El pájaro me vio) and a novel (Y ahora qué debo hacer).



Raúl Zurita
(Santiago, 1950). One of the most remarkable contemporary poets, he has written books like Purgatorio, Anteparaíso, Canto a su amor desaparecido, La vida nueva, El día más blanco, Poemas militantes, Los países muertos, In memoriam and the anthology ¿Qué es el paraíso?. He’s performances included “writing” on the sky in New York (1982) and the Atacama desert (1992). Among other prizes, he has been awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile, José Lezama Lima, Iberoamericano de Poesía Pablo Neruda and Iberoamericano de Letras José Donoso. His works have been translated into many languages.