Time to double down at the 42 Festival: while in one room we’ll have half a dozen prominent international figures discussing genre, settings and creatures, and after having already taken in the Fantastic Panel on Catalan-Language Science Fiction, here we’ve brought together five leading voices in Spanish, all of them with a clear approach to style, who have recently published books steeped in the fantastic genres. Whether through disturbing breakdowns in reality, or through symbolism, metaphors or genre fusion, the authors at this event have proven that when style meets imagination, there’s one thing better than reading: the ability to fill the text with voices and meanings, and to make re-reading even more enjoyable. José Ovejero, from Madrid, and Diego Sánchez Aguilar, from Cartagena in southern Spain, have added mysterious sounds and echoes to their respective depictions of society featuring housing developments, Vibración [Vibration] and Los que escuchan [Those Who Listen]; the emerging author Beatriz Alcaná has raised the stakes with the historical horror of Teseo en llamas [Theseus Burning] and the time loops of Un círculo completo [Full Circle]; the girls in Aleksandra Lun’s Química para mosquitos [Chemistry for Mosquitoes], on the other hand, face unsettling pasts full of abuse and ghosts; and Elaine Vilar Madruga from Cuba has brought together narcos, mothers and a jungle of the senses in El cielo de la selva [The Heavens of the Jungle]. Moderated by Milo J. Krmpotić, all five will present the formal, thematic and semantic scope of creations that push words to their very limits.

Guests:

José Ovejero

Beatriz Alcaná

Aleksandra Lun

Elaine Vilar Madruga

Diego Sánchez Aguilar

Moderator:

Milo J. Krmpotić