february, 2023
Event Details
Join us for a very special evening with Spanish author Kirmen Uribe in conversation with Cristina Rodriguez for the presentation of Bilbao-New York-Bilbao
This original and compelling novel earned debut author Kirmen Uribe the prestigious National Prize for Literature in Spain in 2009. Exquisitely translated from Basque to English by Elizabeth Macklin, Bilbao–New York–Bilbao skillfully captures the intersections of many journeys: past and present, physical and artistic, complete and still unfolding.
This event is free and RSVP is recommended, you can do it HERE
On a transatlantic flight between Bilbao and New York City, a fictional version of Kirmen Uribe recalls three generations of family history—the inspiration for the novel he wants to write—and ponders how the sea has shaped their stories.
Kirmen Uribe writes in Basque. He is one of the most relevant and widely translated writers of his generation in Spain. He has written two collections of poems and four novels. Uribe won Spain’s National Prize for Literature for his first novel, Bilbao–New York–Bilbao. His works have appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, among many other journals. He was selected for the Iowa International Writers Program in 2017 and was awarded the New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellowship for 2018–2019. He is now based in New York City, where he teaches Creative Writing at New York University.
Cristina Rodriguez is a former bookseller, she is also a Publishers Weekly 2020 Star Watch Honoree, a Bookselling Without Borders fellow, and a 2020 CLMP Firecracker Award judge. She currently works in publishing.
Elizabeth Macklin is the author of the poetry collections A Woman Kneeling in the Big City and You’ve Just Been Told. A 1994 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry, she received, in 1998, an Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, which allowed her to spend a year in the Basque Country, beginning studies in Euskara. Her translation of Kirmen Uribe’s first poetry book, Meanwhile Take My Hand, was published in 2007. In addition to Bilbao–New York– Bilbao, she has translated numerous multimedia works in which Uribe has been involved. In the Basque Country she is a member of Zart Cultural Center.
“A seamlessly digressive meditation on a writer’s family and Spanish history. . . . Uribe’s transfixing Sebaldian anecdotes take the reader down a series of rabbit holes and end up piecing together a memorable family portrait. It adds up to a powerful work of autofiction.” —Publishers Weekly
“Uribe has succeeded in realizing what is surely an ambition for many writers: a book that combines family, romances and literature, anchored deeply in a spoken culture but also in bookishness—and all without a single note of self-congratulation.” —Times Literary Supplement
“Uribe’s literature deepens its roots in the Basque Country, but it’s completely universal.” —Harvard Book Review
“[Uribe’s] works enlighten the path for memory.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
