FIVE YEARS EXPLORING WORLDS AND STANDING UP FOR RIGHTS
Introduction
In Catalonia, 2025 is a year full of anniversaries when it comes to fantastic genres: the centenary of Barcelona’s Ana María Matute, featured in an exhibition in the city’s libraries; the 40th anniversary of Gigamesh, a pioneering bookshop for the genre in southern Europe; the 20th anniversary of the death of Jesús Moncada and his hidden worlds in Torrelloba and Mequinensa; the passing of Rosa Fabregat… And, of course, the first five years of the 42 Festival, which is going stronger than ever thanks to the increasingly enthusiastic response from the city, which we hope to experience again from 5 to 9 November at Fabra i Coats.
GUESTS
Here’s a preliminary lineup of some of the big names participating in the fifth edition (but stay tuned; after the summer, there will be more information on the rest):
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V. E. Schwab
Born in California in 1987, is considered one of today’s most-read fantasy authors, with titles for YA and adult readers alike. Notable works include The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, with over 175,000 copies sold in Spanish, Gallant, the two-part Monsters of Verity series and the Shades of Magic trilogy. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is her last novel. She’s been translated into over fifteen languages and recognised by the Goodreads Choice Awards on two occasions.
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Joan-Lluís Lluís
Born in Perpignan in 1963, is a writer, translator and columnist. His twenty-odd published works include the uchronic novel Jo soc aquell que va matar Franco [I’m the One Who Killed Franco], which won him awards such as the Sant Jordi and the Ictineu, and Les cròniques del déu coix [The Chronicles of a Limping God], which won the Serra d’Or Award. His latest novel, Una cançó de pluja [A Rain Song], in bookshops this September, wonders whether animals have their own myths that they tell each other. He has also translated a dozen titles, most recently Jules Verne’s Le Chancellor [translated by Joan-Lluís Lluís into Catalan as El naufragi del Chancellor and known in English as The Survivors of the Chancellor].
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Alberto Chimal
Born in Toluca, Mexico, in 1970, is an author and creative writing professor. His prolific career has earned him several prizes, including the FILEM International Award and Mexico’s National Short Story Award. Fans of fantastic genres can’t miss his La noche en la zona M [Night in the M Zone], a futuristic dystopia that won him the Banco del Libro International Award. Meanwhile, Los atacantes [The Attackers] and Las estancias secretas [The Secret Rooms] are two short story collections where fantastic genres feature prominently. His works have been translated into a dozen languages. Now he presents Las máquinas enfermas, with artificial intelligences as protagonists of his stories.
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H. Zubieta
Born in Madrid in 1993, is a secondary-school teacher, novelist and activist for the rights of trans and non-binary people. They are the author of YA novels Infinitas [Infinite] Tocar el cielo [Touching the Sky] Tres [Three] Rayo. La de los mil nombres [Rayo of a Thousand Names] and most recently, Río a contracorriente [Río Against the Tide], where they explore contemporary narrative for the first time and raises the question of whether resisting the State and capitalism is realism or fantasy.
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Cristina Fernández Cubas
Born in Arenys de Mar in 1945, published her first book, Mi hermana Elba [My Sister Elba], in 1980. Her fantasy stories continued with Los altillos de Brumal [The Attics of Brumal] El ángulo del horror [translated into English as The Angle of Horror], Con Ágatha en Estambul [With Agatha in Istanbul] and Parientes pobres del diablo [The Devil’s Poor Relatives] all published by Tusquets, and brought together in the collection Todos los cuentos [All her Stories]. She has also published La habitación de Nona [translated into English as Nona’s Room], Hermanas de sangre [translated into English as Blood Sisters] and Cosas que ya no existen [Things That No Longer Exist] and the novels El año de gracia [translated into English as The Gap Year] El columpio [The Swing] and La puerta entreabierta [The Half-Open Door]. Among other prizes, she has won the Ciutat de Barcelona, Salambó and Setenil awards, as well as the National Critics’ Prize, and the National Literature Award for Narrative.
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Stella Tack
Born in Münster in 1995, is a trained therapist and romantasy author. With seventeen published books to her name, she’s become one of the most popular authors in Germany. In fact, she’s topping Speigel’s best-seller lists and has received numerous prizes, including the LovelyBooks Best Fiction Book Award for Kiss Me Once and Kiss Me Twice, as well as Best Young Adult Book for Ever & After. Her latest trilogy, Black Bird Academy, has become a sensation in Catalonia as well.
42: THE NAME
42? What’s 42? If you search online, you’ll see right away that this is the symbolic number par excellence for science fiction and, by extension, fantasy genres. There are memes, T-shirts and whole articles to help you figure it out. People honour it, play with it and reference it both overtly and cryptically. Above all, they attempt to solve the mystery behind it.
The poster
Marina Vidal
The poster for the 2025 edition of the 42 Festival draws inspiration from Barcelona’s artistic roots, combining them with the fantastic worlds represented at the 42 Festival through one of this year’s main themes: Catalan mythological creatures. In doing so, illustrator Marina Vidal brings together the Catalan fantastic tradition of mythological beasts and Barcelona’s cultural and artistic evolution.
CURATORS
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Ricard Ruiz Garzón | Curator
Born in Barcelona in 1973, is a writer, the curator of the 42 Festival and a teacher at the Ateneu Barcelonès Writing School. Winner of awards such as the Muntaner, Edebé and Ictineu, he is the author of nearly fifteen books, including two essays on Frankenstein and Dracula and novels such as Esquizo [Schizophrenic], Herba negra [Black Grass], Mångata and Janowitz. He has also compiled anthologies (Insólitas [Unusual Women] Extraordinàries [Extraordinary Women]) and worked as a critic and journalist for the press, radio and television for a quarter of a century. He has been a board member and secretary of the Catalan-Language Writers Association (AELC), co-director of the QLit Festival and deputy chair of the IBBYCAT organisation for children’s/YA literature in Catalan. His works have been adapted to comic, theatre and film formats and translated into half a dozen languages.
@ricruizgarzon
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Karen Madrid Ribas | Adjunct curator
Born in Tordera in 1985, holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and is an adjunct curator at the 42 Festival. Over the past decade she has specialised in cultural journalism, focusing on fantastic genres, and currently directs and hosts idíl·liQ, the podcast continuation of the Quimèric radic programme about fantastic genres (2016–2024). She also coordinates the Utopia and Comic Fantasy areas at Comic Barcelona and is a board member of the Catalan Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (SCCFF). She’s been involved in the 42 Festival since the first edition, as a member of the awards panel and moderator of several roundtable discussions.
@karenmadridribas
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Susana Vallejo | Adjunct curator
Born in Madrid in 1968, is an author, an adjunct curator at the 42 Festival and founder of the online genre writing school Phantastica.com. A winner of the Edebé Award, she has published fifteen novels, including Nueve días en el jardín de Kiev [Nine Days in the Kiev Garden], El espíritu del último verano [The Spirit of the Last Summer], Calle Berlín, 109 [109 Berlin Street] the four-part Porta Coeli fantasy series and her latest work, Por siempre [Always]. She’s been working with the 42 Festival since 2022 and has been a part of the fandom since the 1980s.
TikTok: @SusanaVallejoCh
Instagram: @SusanaVallejo