UPCOMING EVENTS
Welcome to our events page.
Unless stated otherwise, all events occur in
Desperate Literature, Calle de la Cava Baja 8, Madrid,
and are not ticketed!
If you would like to host and event with us or rent our space,
please email events@desperateliterature.com
ALL THE DETAILS ON RENTING OUR SPACE
Tamarock
Jesse Matas in Concert
Saturday 6th June
20h00
CANCELLED
We host folk singer-songwriter, Jesse Matas, as he passes through Madrid.
We first met back in Paris back when we were fresh faced booksellers and when he told us he was passing through, we obviously had to say yes.
Check out a tune or two and come down!
€10 / ticket
Questions 27 & 28
Karen Tei Yamashita reads
moderated by Micah Perks
Sun 7th June
18h00
We’re thrilled to host Karen Tei Yamashita for a reading of her newest work Questions 27 & 28 followed by a discussion with Micah Perks
Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of nine books, including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award, and, most recently, Questions 27 & 28. Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature and a U.S. Artists’ Ford Foundation Fellowship, in 2024 Yamashita was inducted as a Literature Fellow in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Micah Perks is an award-winning author of five books and many essays and stories. She is a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her memoir, Pagan Time, is about growing up in a log cabin on a commune in the wilderness. Her novel, The Wood Between the Worlds, coming out in 2027, is a queer literary speculative novel about the elusive promise of utopia, the rewilding of the natural world, and the uneasy pull between community and solitude, stability and freedom, mothers and daughters. Micah is currently working on a book length essay about care and transformation in the lives of three older women who fell in love with a baby loon on a pond in the wilderness.
The Litriviature Quiz
Wed 10th JUNE
19h30
We’re bringing back a literary quiz that got the DL team through the Pandemic. New, improved, and Covid-free!
THIS MONTH’S THEME: “Potions and Powders”
PLEASE NOTE: we’ll be capping entries at 30…no sales on the door!
€5 / ticket
Bring your own booze!!
Pure silliness guaranteed!
ADDED BONUS – It’s Dom’s, our compère’s, birthday!!!
Literatura kurda contemporánea: escritura, diáspora y memoria
Fatma Savcî y Ciwanmerd Kulek
12 de Junio | 20h00
CON LA CASA KURDA
Conversation with Fatma Savcî and Ciwanmerd Kulek on contemporary Kurdish literature, diaspora, memory and the experience of writing in Kurdish today.
Spanish and English translation available.
Fatma Savcî es escritora y poeta kurda nacida en Mardin, en el Kurdistán del Norte. Durante su juventud participó activamente en la defensa de la cultura y los derechos del pueblo kurdo. Fue encarcelada en 1992 por sus ideas políticas y continuó escribiendo poesía desde prisión, difundiendo clandestinamente sus textos en lengua kurda.
Tras su liberación trabajó como periodista, documentalista y profesora de lengua kurda. Actualmente reside en Suecia, donde continúa desarrollando su labor literaria y educativa.
Ciwanmerd Kulek nació en 1984 en Dih (actualmente Eruh). Su primera novela, Nameyek ji Xwedê re (Una carta a Dios), fue publicada en 2007. Posteriormente publicó las novelas Otobês (2010), Zarokên Ber Çem (2012), Defterên Perrîdankan (2014), 20:39 (2016) y Zemanekî Li Sê Welatan (2025). Una recopilación de sus artículos y ensayos fue publicada bajo el título Strana Şev û Rojekê. Además, escribió regularmente columnas y artículos entre 2009 y 2021. En 2022 publicó el libro Serê We Neêşinim – Qiseyên Dûdirêj.
Grief, the Wild, & Transformation
Micah Perks
Sat 13th JUNE
20h00
Prize-winning author Micah Perks reads from three of her works to explore the themes of grief, the wild, & magical transformation throughout her career.
Guaranteed to be an absolute treat.
Micah Perks is an award-winning author of five books and many essays and stories. She is a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her memoir, Pagan Time, is about growing up in a log cabin on a commune in the wilderness. Her novel, The Wood Between the Worlds, coming out in 2027, is a queer literary speculative novel about the elusive promise of utopia, the rewilding of the natural world, and the uneasy pull between community and solitude, stability and freedom, mothers and daughters. Micah is currently working on a book length essay about care and transformation in the lives of three older women who fell in love with a baby loon on a pond in the wilderness.
Enseñar a Transgredir
Club de Lectura
Intersect Madrid
Sun 14th JUNE
16h00
📚¡Segunda sesión del club de lectura para educadores!
Si te perdiste la primera parte de nuestro club de lectura del libro “Enseñar a Transgredir” de bell hooks, esta es tu nueva oportunidad para unirte 🙌🏾
¡Se nos quedaron muchas reflexiones por comentar la otra vez y ahora si es necesario haber leído el libro previamente! No es necesario que hayas asistido a la primera sesión para asistir a esta.
Si te dedicas a la educación, este libro es una gran apuesta para incorporar nuevas prácticas en tu enseñanza y juntas reflexionaremos sobre cómo redefinirlas ✨
Gratuito
Enlace de Inscripción
BLOOMSDAY
Tue 16th JUNE
19h00
Yes I said Yes
19h00
(Re)leer, (re)escribir, traducir “Ulises”
¿Quién se atreve a reescribir Ulises? Le traductore Lara Alonso Corona, conversará con Maddy Robinson sobre Playa Placer de Helen Palmer, una novela que reinterpreta el texto de Joyce en clave queer y noventera. Hablaremos de los desafíos de volcar el texto a otro idioma, las distintas versiones y traducciones de esta obra y de cómo leer (y escribir) Ulises en los tiempos actuales.
Incluye lectura bilingüe.
20h00
The Readthrough
The music, drinks and readings from Ulysses begin!
Come, bring a bottle and pick a section to read!
IN ANY LANGUAGE WE CAN GET THE TEXT FOR
event supported by Tourism Ireland
The Speculative Memoir
A workshop with Micah Perks
Sat 20th JUNE
11h-13h
€15 entry
Max 15 spots
A short-form workshop from award-winning author, Micah Perks!
About the workshop:
How does one tell impossible true stories? Perhaps through a speculative mode, blending fairy tales or ghost stories or horror stories or time travel with autobiography. In this two hour workshop I’ll talk a little about speculative memoir, we’ll read some excerpts by Carmen Maria Machado, Lidia Yuknavitch, Sofia Samatar and/or Sabrina Orah Mark, and do a writing exercise or two to experiment with this exciting genre.
About Micah:
Micah Perks is an award-winning author of five books and many essays and stories. She is a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her memoir, Pagan Time, is about growing up in a log cabin on a commune in the wilderness. Her novel, The Wood Between the Worlds, coming out in 2027, is a queer literary speculative novel about the elusive promise of utopia, the rewilding of the natural world, and the uneasy pull between community and solitude, stability and freedom, mothers and daughters. Micah is currently working on a book length essay about care and transformation in the lives of three older women who fell in love with a baby loon on a pond in the wilderness.
The Bed Trick: Sex & Deception on Trial
Izabella Scott
with Skye Arundhati Thomas
Thu 25th JUNE
20h
‘This is probably the weirdest story I’ve ever heard, but Izabella Scott lays it out with her clear intelligence, warm empathy and gentle grace’
– Helen Garner, author of THIS HOUSE OF GRIEF
A true crime investigation into the trials of a student convicted of rape by deception.
Two former best friends face each other in court at a sex offence trial. Miss X, making the accusation, claims she was tricked into queer sex, many times, by a best friend pretending to be her boyfriend. But that friend, Gayle Newland, tells a different story. They were secret lesbians, she says, lovers in the closet. The boyfriend was imaginary, and part of a role play that had been going on for years.
This astonishing case reached UK courtrooms twice in 2015 and 2017, capturing national attention. At both trials, Newland was convicted of a rare and controversial crime known as ‘rape by deception’. In literature, the plot has been named ‘the bed trick’. Shakespeare made it famous in plays with lovers switching places in the dark, but in real life, a consummated bed trick is rare.
Izabella Scott is a writer from London. She has been published by the Financial Times, the London Review of Books, Granta, The World of Interiors and others. She is the co-author, with Skye Arundhati Thomas, of Pleasure Gardens. She was formerly co-editor of The White Review.
Skye Arundhati Thomas is editor of Palestine is everywhere (co-published by Silver Press & TBA21); they are a writer and editor from India, currently based in Madrid.
Poetry as a second language
hosted by Rafael Carvajal
Fri 26th JUNE
20h
“Parce qu’en français c’est plus facile d’écrire sans style.”
Samuel Beckett
This reading features poets reading in a language which is not their mother tongue. On this occasion, Spanish speakers read original poems written in English or French, celebrating a long tradition of authors working from within their second or third language and the nuances, challenges and opportunities that offers.
Featuring Milena Virgen Hidalgo Castro, Caetano, Rafael Carvajal, and Andrés Urdaneta.
Milena Virgen Hidalgo Castro (1989): Cuban poet and fiction writer. She currently lives in Madrid. She teaches Creative Writing. She has published the poetry collections Monogamia (2011) and La Hija de un Sartre (2022), and the novel Los cuatro vértices del triángulo (2017). Other works by her can be found in anthologies such as La Poesía de la vida (2017), Ariete. Antología de la más joven narrativa cubana (2018), Las escritoras de Urras. Año 1 (2021), and Libro Rojo. Volumen 13 (2022). Her short story ‘Jugar a las casitas’ won the 36th edition of the Tiflos Short Story Prize.
Caetano was born in 2003 in Montevideo, Uruguay. At eighteen he traveled to Europe, beginning a nomadic period that led him to live in cities such as Valencia, Madrid, Barcelona, and Ciudad Real, as well as Paris, London, and Copenhagen. In the Danish capital he spent nearly a year immersed in the performative‑poetic scene, participating in open mics, theaters, and experimental spaces.
His first anthology, Photomicrography of a Section of the Rectum of a Dog, Expanded 40 Times, was released in Madrid in 2024. In 2026 he prepares his second work, The Cabins of the Helical House Will Have the Shape of a Slice of Cake, while beginning a deeper exploration of the performing arts. From this point forward, he aims to develop his own artistic collective and expand his practice across disciplines.
Rafael Carvajal was born in Spain but raised in the United States. He began as a poet in Southern California, writing in English, but upon returning to Spain, he switched to Spanish so he could recite in the language of his audience.
All of his poems are conceived to be read aloud. Although he has published works in the US and Spain—for example, Dogs and the Flowers They Piss On, published by Drew Blood Production Ltd. in California, and Oscuridad Fundamental and 25 Odas y un poema interminable, published in Spain by Mariposa Ediciones and Inflamavle, respectively—it is on stage that he truly delivers his message. Numerous examples of his wild recitations can be found on YouTube, and his life and work are the subject of the documentary Yo maté a Ralph Green, available on Filmin.
Andrés Urdaneta was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1995. Educated between Caracas and Paris, he studied music at the Lino Gallardo Conservatory and later Modern Literature and Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne University.
He published his first book of poems, Follaje de hojas de papel (Foliage of Paper Leaves) (2011), while still a teenager. Later came Against the Wall (2014), the novel The Lucidity of Fire (Ediciones Oblicuas, Barcelona, 2016), and the poetry collection The Invention of Oblivion (2018). He currently lives in Madrid, where he is pursuing a doctorate in French studies and comparative literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid, focusing on the translation and reception of Rimbaud in Spain.
Entre sueños y símbolos:
Leonora Carrington,
Remedios Varo y Katy Horna
Pilar Dolón
Sat 27th JUNE
20h
En esta charla se analizará la producción artística de Leonora Carrington desde una perspectiva técnica e histórica, prestando especial atención a la construcción de lenguajes visuales vinculados al simbolismo, la alquimia y la mitología celta. También se abordará la relación artística y personal entre Carrington, Remedios Varo y Katy Horna durante su exilio en México.
La magia y el arte se entrelazan en las obras surrealistas de estas tres creadoras cuando coinciden en México, dando lugar a universos donde lo onírico, lo simbólico y lo fantástico transforman la realidad en una experiencia poética y profundamente imaginativa. La charla explorará los vínculos creativos que compartieron y la manera en que sus trayectorias contribuyeron a enriquecer el panorama artístico y cultural del siglo XX.
Pilar Dolón es historiadora del arte especializada en investigación, divulgación cultural y análisis de las prácticas artísticas modernas y contemporáneas.
Desarrolló toda su trayectoria profesional en el Ministerio de Cultura, desempeñando funciones en distintos departamentos, desde Cooperación Internacional hasta Protección del Patrimonio Histórico. Sus últimos años de actividad laboral transcurrieron en el Archivo de la Corona de Aragón de Barcelona, donde trabajó en el ámbito de la gestión cultural.
Desde hace varios años comparte sus conocimientos a través de charlas y actividades de divulgación cultural centradas en mujeres artistas y sus aportaciones a la historia del arte. Su trabajo busca visibilizar a creadoras que, desde distintas disciplinas y contextos históricos, desarrollaron lenguajes propios y transformaron el panorama artístico. A través de una perspectiva crítica y accesible, sus conferencias generan espacios de reflexión sobre arte, género e identidad cultural.
PAST EVENTS
Voz, Memoria y el Exilio del Kurdo
Selîm Temo
30 de mayo | 16h00
CON LA CASA KURDA
Durante mayo y junio, Casa Kurda organiza cuatro encuentros dedicados a la literatura kurda contemporánea, con la participación de Selîm Temo. Un programa para conversar sobre poesía, teatro, escritura, diáspora, memoria, lengua, exilio e identidad; y para acercarnos a las formas actuales de creación literaria en kurdo.
Selîm Temo (Batman, 1972) es uno de los escritores, poetas, traductores y académicos más destacados de la literatura kurda contemporánea. Su trabajo combina creación literaria, investigación académica y traducción, y ha desempeñado un papel fundamental en el desarrollo y reconocimiento internacional de la lengua y la literatura kurda.
Estudió Lengua y Literatura Turca y posteriormente realizó investigaciones académicas centradas en la literatura kurda y las relaciones culturales entre las literaturas kurda, turca y persa. Participó activamente en la creación del primer Departamento de Lengua y Literatura Kurda en universidades de Turquía, contribuyendo de forma decisiva a la institucionalización de los estudios kurdos en el ámbito universitario.
OUR 12TH BIRTHDAY
BONANZA
Sat May 23rd
ALL DAY
after one year in calle de la cava baja, we celebrate our birthday with a Ginsberg/Beat Generation inspired all-day festivalish affair
12h00 | Write in our all-day Cadavre Exquis
As 2026 is the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Allen Ginsberg, we’re folding in a whole host of Beat Generation fun, including an ‘On the Road’-style scroll on our typewriter. We invite guests to add to the story as the evening continues.
17h30 | Listen to Bluegrass from Stierwood
18h00 | Ana María Caballero reads from her new book Material
in discussion with Dr. Goretti González
Ana Maria Caballero is a Colombian-American poet and artist. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Art Writers Award and a Sevens Foundation Grant, she’s the first living poet to sell a poem at Sotheby’s and the first artist ever to receive a triple Lumen finalist nomination.
Dr. Goretti González is Assistant Professor of Literature at IE School of Humanities. She holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University and specializes in early modern global Spanish and Italian cultural production. Her scholarship center on cultural mobility, exploring how texts, people, and ideas move across borders. Her work has appeared in leading journals and edited volumes, and she is presently developing a digital humanities project on the global afterlives of Lazarillo de Tormes.
19h30 | A HOWL readthrough
with special guest readers
If you want to read, just sign up on the night!
20h00 | A Beat Generation salon with Isabel Castelao-Gómez, Regina Weinreich & Robert Lee
We are joined by veritable Beat Generation legends to read, discuss and tell tales of old.
Robert Lee taught at the University of Kent for three decades. His more than 40 book publications include Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions (2003), which won the American Book Award in 2004, and The Beats:Authorships,Legacies (2019). He is also a writer and has published multiple books of poetry and fiction. He lives in Murcia.
Regina Weinreich is a leading scholar of the Beat Generation, filmmaker and journalist from New York. She produced the award-winning documentary Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider and directed The Beat Generation: An American Dream. She is the author of Kerouac’s Spontaneous Poetics and she edited Kerouac’s Book of Haikus. She has written about the Beats in The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Village Voice. She was a good friend of Allen Ginsberg and Burroughs, witnessing New York avant-garde cultural scene for decades.
Isabel Castelao-Gómez teaches at UNED and has published the study Female Beatness: mujeres género y poesía en la Generación Beat. She has also translated experimental poet Mina Loy (Breve Baedeker Lunar) and the Beat poet Elise Cowen (Dejadme salir, dejadme entrar). She has two books of poetry (Cartas desde Tebas and Abril (and the cruellest months). She has participated in the New York Kerouac Festival and other poetry events. She dances Contact Improvisation and is a mother of two.
21h00 | DJs Brown’s Lair & Mondo Bizarro Disco, Latin soul, Afrobeat
Galáxias by Haroldo de Campos,
with translator Odile Cisneros
& Robin Munby
SATURDAY 16th May
20h00
We celebrate the recenet release of Haroldo de Campos’s Galaxías with readings and a conversation between Odile Cisneros and Robin Munby.
The first English translation of galáxias, by the renowned Brazilian avant-gardist Haroldo de Campos, was published in 2024 by Ugly Duckling Presse. This brilliant work (composed over two decades and published in 1984) charts a linguistic odyssey across time and space, from Homer’s ancient Greece to the 1950s Beat Poets – a formidable experiment in polyglot poetry that prefigures Spoken Word.
Praise for galáxias: “A brilliant translation of a brilliant work, Cisneros’s galaxias is a major literary event.” –Marjorie Perloff
FESTIVAL RIZOMA:
Ser muchas y una íntima desconocida
con autora Laura S. González de Araújo
en conversación con Victoria Gabaldón (Mamagazine)
Viernes 8 de Mayo
20h00
Una autoficción sobre lo femenino, el deseo, la amistad, el cuerpo y la maternidad.
Ser muchas y una íntima desconocida, de Laura S. González de Araújo, es un ensayo literario con poses de autoficción construido a partir de las voces de una mujer que decide revisar su intimidad impulsada por un doble proceso: un tratamiento de fertilidad y las sesiones con su psicoanalista.
Laura S. González de Araújo (Vigo, 1984) es Licenciada en Ciencias Políticas y Doctora en Filosofía y Psicoanálisis por la Universidad Paris VII-Diderot y la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Desde 2010, ha sido docente en varias universidades de París y Madrid y ha colaborado con distintos medios de comunicación españoles. Dirige un Máster en Diseño y Dirección Creativa de Moda en IADE/Universidad Europea, centro en el que es profesora de Sociología de la Moda. Imparte charlas en distintas ciudades españolas sobre moda, arte y sociedad y participa asiduamente en proyectos culturales con espacios de ocio, museos y diseñadores.
Victoria Gabaldón es la creadora de MaMagazine, orgullosamente apoyada por una tribu de comadres poetas, escritoras, fotógrafas, creativas, ilustradoras, psicólogas, docentes y periodistas especializadas en maternidad.
Memory, Land, and Imagination:
Feminist Ways of Doing History
a WORKSHOP by Azadeh Faramarziha
Tue 28th
19h00
FREE UNTIL FULL
(Max 25 spots)
Knowledge Workshop (KW) is a feminist organization based in Beirut, Lebanon, working at the intersection of feminist history, oral history, and storytelling. Our work centers on documenting, preserving, and activating the stories of women and trans people in Lebanon and across the region. We have developed an oral history archive that gathers lived experiences often excluded from dominant historical narratives. In addition, we have published three books that explore how history and storytelling can be mobilized to produce feminist knowledge. Alongside this, we regularly facilitate workshops and trainings that support individuals and communities in engaging critically and creatively with their histories and narratives.
KW seeks to cultivate and sustain an ecosystem of community historians. Within this ecosystem, participants collectively explore practices of mutual learning, documentation, and storytelling. By grounding knowledge in lived experiences, we aim to create space for reinterpreting the past while also imagining more just and inclusive futures.
In this session, beyond introducing KW, its work, methodologies, and context, we aim to open a collective conversation with participants on how we can approach history in non-linear and situated ways. We are particularly interested in exploring how histories can be shaped through our relationships to land, memory, storytelling, and imagination, rather than through dominant, linear, or institutional frameworks.
Azadeh Faramarziha is a feminist and social justice activist, co-director of Knowledge Workshop in Beirut, Lebanon
Azadeh has been a feminist activist since 2006 in Iran and then in Lebanon. She has worked with many grassroots feminist collectives. Since 2016, she has been focusing mostly on feminist histories, archives and storytelling in Beirut, fostering feminist intergenerational dialogues, documenting feminist stories and creating spaces for feminist community historians.
The Litriviature Quiz
Mon 20th APRIL
19h30
We’re bringing back a literary quiz that got the DL team through the Pandemic. New, improved, and Covid-free!
THIS MONTH’S THEME: Death (of the Author)
€5 / ticket
BRING YOUR OWN BOOZE
Pure silliness guaranteed!
Stierwood & Maeve de Vere
A Bluegrass Concert
Fri 24th
20h00
Sunny Stier-Wood, known musically by her apellido Stierwood, is a Madrid-based bluegrass singer-songwriter. With family roots in Appalachia—the birthplace of bluegrass—she moved to Madrid three years ago, bringing the genre with her as a kind of personal export.
Stierwood gives a modern twist to the whimsical, narrative lyricism of traditional bluegrass ballads, drawing on everything from Dante to Beatrice smoking cigarettes to the works of Pedro Almodóvar. She also draws inspiration from translating traditional American folk songs into Spanish.
You can find her song “Beatrice,” performed with a five-piece bluegrass band, on Spotify.
Max Capacity: 25 people
Free entry until capacity.
Formas de comunicar, formas de amar
LibroMAD – Noche de Los Libros
with Maria Tausiet
Sat 25th
19h00
An evening in two parts:
We discuss Maria Tausiet’s work Formas de Amar whilst reading poetry over the centuries before inviting the audience to stay, drink wine and write a letter, send a book!
You write it, we send it!
Tú lo escribes, nosotros lo enviamos.
Una velada en dos actos para explorar cómo nos conectamos.
Comenzamos con una conversación en torno a Formas de amar de María Tausiet, un recorrido por distintas maneras de amar a lo largo de los siglos, entrelazado con lecturas de poesía bilingüe.
Poco a poco, la noche se transformará en un espacio de comunicación lenta: un momento para detenerse, escribir y reconectar. Invitamos a los participantes a enviar postales, cartas y libros a las personas que quieren, recuperando el placer de la palabra escrita y del gesto pensado.
En esta segunda parte, Desperate Literature proporcionará todos los materiales necesarios y, en los días siguientes, se encargará de hacer llegar cada envío a su destino.
En su primera edición, LIBROMAD se presenta bajo el lema «los confines de los libros». Unos confines que queremos abrir, expandir y llevar más allá de las paredes de la librería.
An evening in two parts: we begin with a discussion of Fromas de Amar (Maria Tausiet), exploring forms of love through the centuries intertwined with bilingual poetry readings, before quietening down and settling into a space of ‘slow communication’, in which participants can send postcards, letters and books to their loved ones.
During the second part of the evening, Desperate Literature will provide all materials and then, in the coming days, ship all packages off to their destinations.
LIBROMAD’s first year se desarrollará bajo el lema “los confines de los libros”, confines we wish to open up, to extend beyond the walls of the bookshop!
I Am Still Alive:
Dispatches from Gaza
A reading & discussion
with Mahmoud M Al-Shaer
Wed 15th
20h00
We celebrate the launch of two works, Mahmoud M Al-Shaer’s I am Still Alive and Palestine is Everywhere (an anthology of writing from and on Gaza), Mahmoud will be in conversation with editor Skye Arundhati Thomas to discuss writing under siege, memory, survival, and the ways language continues to carry us across destruction, exile, and through new geographies.
Mahmoud M. Al-Shaer is a prominent Palestinian writer, poet, and cultural organizer from Rafah. He is the editor-in-chief of 28 Magazine, founder of 28 Gallery, and a member of the Dahaleez collective. His work focuses on collaborative literary and cultural practices emerging from Gaza. Al-Shaer has coordinated numerous projects with international institutions like the Goethe-Institut and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Notably, he co-curated the New Alphabet School at HKW Berlin (2019–2022) and showcased installations at the 12th Berlin Biennial. His multidisciplinary art often blends photography with text to explore memory and cultural resistance. Following the onset of the genocide in Gaza, he served at an IMC field hospital in Khan Younis until October 2025. This period of survival and documentation culminated in his book, I Am Still Alive: Dispatches from Gaza (K. Verlag, 2025), which positions writing as a vital existential and political act under siege.
Skye Arundhati Thomas is editor of Palestine is everywhere (co-published by Silver Press & TBA21); they are a writer and editor from India, currently based in Madrid.
This event is made possible with the support of TBA21 & Red Teja.
Subterrania:
Notes from the Sótano
Sat 11th
19h30
Join us for an evening of new work from the Desperate Literature writing group, working from the Sótano of Cava Baja, 8.
For anybody looking to connect with writers working in the city today!
Featuring:
Robert Cassidy, Inés Cases-Falque, Jane Hart Dewey, Finola Griffin, Alison Hughes, Inés Paris Arranz, Inés Perez Cervantes, Maddy Robinson, Michaelangelo Shortis, Dylan Streb, Miranda Verstraete
‘Fresh Rhubarb’
an evening of new writing
Featuring:
Rafael Carvajal
Joan Fleming
Robert Loyko-Greer
Andrea Mason
Sat 28th
20h00
We host a collection of truly brilliant writers for a medley of new fiction from some of Desperate Literature’s favourite people.
—
Rafael Carvajal is a Madrid based poet. He’s read many times at Desperate Literature.
Joan Fleming is an award-winning author from Australia/Aotearoa. Her debut novel The Fig Book — a darkly funny madcap ecological folktale — is forthcoming with Mariner in the US and Allen & Unwin in Australia/NZ.
Robert Loyko-Greer is a co-founder of the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, and the co-editor, with Kate Ellis, of 22 Fictions: New Writing from Desperate Literature and Brick Lane Bookshop (CHEERIO Publishing). He works in London for Profile Books and their literary imprint Serpent’s Tail.
Andrea Mason is a London-based writer and artist whose journal and anthology publications include UEA New Writing, 3:AM Magazine, Failed States, Tar Press, Sublunary Editions, The Happy Hypocrite, and Frozen Tears III. She was the runner-up of our 2023 literary prize.
Casa Poética Open Mic
with special guest
Inés Martínez (Libero editorial)
Sunday 22nd March
17h30 – 20h00
Join the participants of our poetry discussion group @casapoetica.madrid in an open mic session!
Spanish poet @irene_torra will host this poetic afternoon, where guest poet Inés Martínez (Libero editorial) will share their experience of running a publishing house.
We’ll then open the mic and you can read your own poetry, a text by a poet you like, or simply join us and enjoy the readings.
This is a bilingual event (esp/eng) but ALL languages are welcome!
SOLD OUT
FERAL NATURE
a one-day workshop
with JOAN FLEMING
Saturday 21st March (rescheduled)
€75
(10h30 – 18h00)
In this one-day writing workshop, award-winning author Joan Fleming will lead playful and generative exercises that invite absurdity, indecorum, and the ridiculous into your writing, via our focus on the natural world.
Expect to spend the day doing close-readings of marvellous short texts across fiction, poetry, and non-fiction; engaging in dynamic group discussion and brainstorming; and going inwards periods of quiet, focussed writing where you respond to a series of prompts designed to get you thinking differently about the possibilities of the page – and the possibilities of our fragile, strange, entangled connections with everything on earth that isn’t us.
The day will include:
- Morning session 90 minutes
- Break for coffee
- Late morning session 90 minutes
- Long lunch break with option for a menú del día with the group
- Afternoon session 120 minutes
Full Description:
Joan’s approach to writing workshops is to create an inviting, inclusive, dynamic container where we can think new thoughts together in a safe space for experimentation, and for sharing freshly generated work. Themes might include: our strange relationship with animals; blurring supposedly hard boundaries between the human and non-human; leaning into our feral inheritance; the curious intelligence of wild nature; and the grief that arises when we contemplate wild nature in deep trouble.
By the end of the day:
Expect to come away with three new pieces drafted, to revise, refine, and expand.
Joan’s particular interest is in taking your standard “nature writing” – i.e.., the call of the wild geese! awe! transcendence! – and getting a little weird with it. A little irreverent. A little absurd. Come and connect with the wild, the odd, the sad, the animal, the uncanny, the broken, and the eco-absurd.
About Joan:
Joan Fleming is an award-winning author from Australia/Aotearoa. Her debut novel The Fig Book — a darkly funny madcap ecological folktale — is forthcoming with Mariner in the US and Allen & Unwin in Australia/NZ. In 2025 she was the Kaipukahu Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato. Her honors include the Biggs Poetry Prize, the Verge Prize for Poetry, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize from the Hunter Writers’ Centre, a Creative New Zealand writing fellowship, and a residency with the Michael King Writers’ Centre. She has been teaching creative writing at Antipodean universities for over a decade.
Hipocondría / Hypocondria
with WILL REES
BILINGÜAL READING
conversation in English
Wednesday 18th March
20h00
“Everyone must read this book.” – Lucia Osborne-Crowley
“Extraordinary and utterly compelling.” – Adam Phillips
“An almost impossible balancing act.” – Merve Emre
“Part philosophical treatise, part memoir, part history, Rees’s genre-bending meditation on hypochondria references everyone from Freud to Kafka to Seinfeld in a provocative search to find out why, exactly, we believe we’re sick.” – The New York Times
A free-wheeling philosophical essay, Hypochondria combines incisive contemporary cultural critique, colourful literary history, and the author’s own experience of chronic health anxiety to ask what we might learn from the hypochondriac’s discomforting experience of their body. Hypochondria is expansive in its range of references, from the writings of Franz Kafka to original yet accessible readings of theorists like Lauren Berlant. Whether he is discussing Seinfeld, John Donne, or his own past, Rees reveals himself to be a wry and perceptive critic, exploring the causes – and the costs – of our desire for certainty.
Semana de Irlanda
con Eimear McBride
BILINGÜAL EVENT
Wednesday 11th March
19h30
CASA DEL LECTOR (MATADERO)
Celebramos la Semana de Irlanda con Eimear McBride e Impedimenta Editorial en una lectura y conversación bilingüe con el editor Enrique Redel.
Presentado por Desperate Literature y Tourism Ireland. Disfrutaremos de lecturas en inglés y español.
La conversación será bilingüe.
We celebrate Semana de Irlanda with Eimear McBride and Impedimenta Editorial for a bilingual reading and discussion with editor Enrique Redel.
Presented by Desperate Literature and Tourism Ireland. Readings in English and Spanish. Discussion in English.
Eimear McBride es una de las voces más poderosas e innovadoras de la actual narrativa en lengua inglesa. Un auténtico clásico moderno.
EVENT HELD WITH:
Tourism Ireland
Impedimenta Editorial
La Casa del Lector (Matadero)
PAJARO AZUL
a night of literary mythmaking
Mon 23rd February
20h
Lanzamos la sexta edición de la revista Pajaro Azul: el mito!
En esta revista hemos recopilado la creación de muchas artistas que, en cada una de sus disciplinas, han aportado su visión sobre este concepto. Hay mitos re-interpretados, nuevas cosmologías, mundos apocalípticos y mitos de los de siempre. Unos cuantos relatos, mucha ilustración, una sección de fotografía, poesía, y otras cositas.
El equipo:
Pájaro Azul es un colectivo artístico. Lanzamos revistas monotemáticas, cada muchos meses (a veces son años) y también organizamos talleres de escritura, collage, eventos y fiestas donde nos juntamos para crear juntas.
El grupo surgió en Madrid pero se ha ido expandiendo por la península y ahora tenemos pájaros desde Lisboa hasta Barcelona, pasando por Donosti y la Sierra de Gredos.
En cada una de las revistas, los diferentes artístas que participan en cada edición, proyectan el enfoque desde su disciplina. Ilustrando, escribiendo, a través de la fotografía o la poesía… Todas estas creaciones se recogen en una publicación física. La revista que ahora puede llegar hasta tu casa.
The Fig Book
fiction from visiting author Joan Fleming
Sat 21st February
20h
Join us for a reading from Joan Fleming’s forthcoming debut novel The Fig Book, a darkly funny, madcap ecological folktale about a newly engaged couple house-sitting for a wealthy artist in a grand, remote house, whose relationship unravels into a wonderfully absurdist romp that quickly descends into elemental darkness.
The Fig Book is forthcoming with Mariner (US) and Allen & Unwin (Au + NZ).
—
Joan Fleming is an award-winning author from Australia/Aotearoa. Her debut novel The Fig Book — a darkly funny madcap ecological folktale — is forthcoming with Mariner in the US and Allen & Unwin in Australia/NZ. In 2025 she was the Kaipukahu Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato. Her honors include the Biggs Poetry Prize, the Verge Prize for Poetry, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize from the Hunter Writers’ Centre, a Creative New Zealand writing fellowship, and a residency with the Michael King Writers’ Centre. She has been teaching creative writing at Antipodean universities for over a decade.
Three Women:
a radio play by Sylvia Plath
Fri 20th February
20h
A live version of the poem in three voices that Sylvia Plath wrote and was first performed on BBC radio in 1962. It follows the life of three women who enter a maternity ward to give birth, all with differing expectations and differing results.
This performance builds on the strength of the Plath‘s verses and respectfully adds movement and staging to the recital.
Performed by Violeta de Benito, Anya Izyumova, and Marián Martínez Mondéjar.
Directed by Rafael Carvajal
—
Violeta de Benito was born in Madrid in 1998 and grew up in a small town southeast of the city. She has been writing stories, diaries, and poetry since childhood, but it wasn’t until her early twenties that she began writing seriously. Her poetry is visceral, filled with intense and passionate imagery that explores themes such as mental illness, rural spirituality, and bodily pain. She was part of the Sexta Generación de Nuevas Miradas by Plataforma Placa in 2019 and has contributed to several magazines from the publisher-turcollective Ojos de Sol. At the end of 2020, she joined Ojos de Sol as a member, presenter, and organizer of poetry events. In early 2021, she became coordinator of the Youth Section of Editorial Ultramarina. In February of this year, she was selected to be part of an anthology of witch-themed poetry by Mariposa Ediciones. Currently, she balances her writing with her work in early childhood education, where she explores language acquisition from a young age and investigates new poetic uses of language with oneself and in relation to others, both children and adults.
Anya Izyumova was born in the Soviet Union in 1987, she experienced a profound sense of displacement when her mother took her to live in the United Kingdom at the age of seven. She later moved to Spain at 22, where she met her podenco daughter, Kira (or Koshka). She works as an English teacher while pursuing her literary dreams. She began reading and writing poetry in her childhood and writes in the three languages of her three countries. In 2026, her work will be published in an anthology by Factor Literario. Sylvia Plath was one of the first poets to inspire her, and she brings that sensitivity to Plath’s work in this performance.
Marián Martínez Mondéjar, also known by her poetic pseudonym Maryam Luna, is a Spanish poet, journalist, singer-songwriter, and composer of flamenco and world music. A graduate in Journalism from the European University of Madrid, she researched and wrote the manuscript Mihrimah Sultan: The Power of the Sultanas, which explores and challenges stereotypes of Muslim women. As a poet, she began writing at a young age and has participated in Madrid’s most prominent poetry readings, both in the underground scene and in more academic and international events. She created the internationally renowned blog 1000 Vidas y 100 Lunas (1000 Lives and 100 Moons), which has garnered thousands of visits in over 70 countries. As a composer, she composed and produced Desde Jaipur hasta Istanbul (From Jaipur to Istanbul), an unreleased recording (2022) that includes some of the lyrics from this collection, such as “Oro y Canela” (Gold and Cinnamon) and “Tangos de la Luna Nueva” (Tangos of the New Moon).
The Crib and Other Stories
celebrating Albertine Sarrazin
with Sonya Moor
Fri 13th February
20h
We present the previously untranslated stories for the first time in Madrid, celebrating the works and live of Albertine Sarrazin with her translator, Sonya Moor.
Her translation of Albertine Sarrazin’s The Crib and Other Stories is published by Cōnfingō, as is her collection The Comet and Other Stories.
Her stories are widely published in literary reviews and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories 2024 and Best British Short Stories 2022, and recognised for awards such as the Cinnamon Literature Award, Seán O’Faoláin International Short Story Competition and Bridport Short Story Prize.
As a PhD candidate, she is researching word–image relations in short fiction.
With Livi Michael, she coproduces Small Pleasures, the podcast about great short stories and greatness in the short story form.
Sin tregua:
Memorias políticas
de una militante feminista
con Carmen Martín Rojas
y Jessica Gamboa Valdés
Viernes 6 de Febrero
20h
Este libro es una crónica cruda y emocionante de la vida de Andrea Dworkin: niña lectora rebelde frente a las injusticias y la hipocresía; joven ávida de conocimiento, militante pacifista y viajera; mujer que sufrió en carne propia la prostitución y la violencia machista. Las experiencias vividas la llevaron a comprometerse sin concesiones con la libertad de las mujeres hasta el final de su vida, convirtiéndose en una activista y escritora de renombre internacional.
—
Jessica Gamboa Valdés, hija de Cecilia y nieta de Zoila. Licenciada en Trabajo Social, máster en psicología comunitaria y en estudios de la diferencia sexual. Docente de trabajo social. Sostiene una práctica política feminista autónoma radical de la diferencia en la colectiva Feministas Lúcidas de Santiago de Chile, cofundada con Andrea Franulic y otras, el año 2013.
Carmen Martín Rojas es hija de Isabel y nieta de Juana y Manuela. Es traductora de dos libros de la filósofa feminista radical elemental Mary Daly: Ex Órbita, un Viaje Deslumbrante (2022) y Brujedario, Primer Diccionario de las Tejedoras de Palabras (2024), ambas obras publicadas en Sabina Editorial. Desde 2018 está en relación política con las mujeres de Feministas Lúcidas, quienes le desvelan otras realidades.
Carmen Oliart. Editora y socia de Sabina Editorial desde 2014. Es además autora de los libros Siguiendo a Emily Dickinson (2015) y María Goyri. Una mujer asombrosa (2020).
Violeta Gil
Andábamos Maravillados
noche de poesía
(evento bilingüe)
Jueves 5 de Febrero
20h
«Andábamos maravillados,
nos quitamos la ropa vieja y nos pusimos la nueva.
Absorbíamos fuerza de cada nuevo suelo
y ya no contuvimos nunca más el aliento».
Ingeborg Bachmann
Después de haber publicado su primera novela y de haber seguido profundizando en su trabajo como creadora escénica, este es el esperado regreso de Violeta a la poesía. “Andábamos maravillados” es un concierto, una conversación sobre el amor entre personas de dos generaciones cercanas pero muy distintas entre sí, una celebración, una pregunta, un baile y una confesión. Este trabajo supone para Violeta un regreso a aquello que le provocó el interés por la literatura en primer lugar. Con la voluntad de atender a un deseo antiguo, un amor por las palabras y su belleza, han surgido estos nuevos textos, que al mismo tiempo hablan del mundo en qué vivimos, nos cuestionan, nos atragantan y tratan de movernos.
—
Violeta Gil, licenciada en Filología Inglesa e Interpretación, en 2005 funda La Tristura, compañía en la que escribe, dirige y produce piezas que se muestran y triunfan a nivel nacional e internacional.
En 2019 publicamos su primer libro de poemas “antes de que tiréis mis cosas”, y estrena el espectáculo poético performativo del mismo nombre en colaboración con el músico y compositor Abraham Boba. Tras el éxito de la gira y después de publicar su primera novela, en 2025 publicamos su segundo poemario: “Andábamos Maravillados”, que también se expande en una pieza escénica junto al músico Marcos Nadie.
Casa Poética
discussion group
with special guest
Sana El Mokaddim
Feb 1st
17h-19h
Join the participants of our poetry discussion group @casapoetica.madrid in this special session with guest poet Sana El Mokaddim!
Sana’s work reflects deeply on language, voice and flesh — the theme of our winter term readings. Her family’s migration story permeates her life experience, and her poetry powerfully addresses the coexistence of two worlds in her body and her tongue. Sana will be joining us in a collaborative close reading of her poem ‘Al Andalus’, followed by a reading and conversation on her writing and other artistic endeavors. In this poem, Sana describes, analyses and questions where words come from, how they are used to define reality, and pushes us, readers, to do the same — reminding us of the stories and the History behind the words we use.
Please make sure to book your spot or contact Irene (irenetorra.poesia@gmail.com) for details.
Cost €9
Death of Descartes
with Michael S. Bekele
Fri 9th Jan
20h
Shadow Ticket
A Book Club
with Elizabeth Duval, Sara Barquinero
y Alfredo Suárez
Sat 20th Dec
12h
In English y Español
15 places available.
PLEASE BOOK HERE
It is important to have read the book before coming.
We offer a 10% discount on copies to anybody attending!
Calabobos
Luis Mario
con Lucía Reyes
Dec 17th
20h
«Una de esas novelas raras y extraordinarias que contienen un mundo» Layla Martínez
Celebramos Calabobos con lecturas y una discusión!
En Cantabria «calabobos» responde a una llovizna menuda que cae de forma imperceptible, por eso en esta novela llueve todo el rato y sus personajes están mojados permanentemente. Rodeado de paisajes bellos a la par que violentos y a través de una oralidad descarnada, maleducada, y un cántabru tosco y fiero, el protagonista de esta historia habla de la brutalidad silenciosa de un pueblo desamparado, que cala poco a poco en su gente sin que ni siquiera se den cuenta, mientras trata de encontrar a su hermana antes de que llegue la pleamar.
Han tenido que pasar varios años para que Luis Mario se diera cuenta de que vivía empapado y, una vez seco, ha podido escribir sobre la Mujer Oso, el Hombre Pez, mujeres que amamantan a perros, hombres que destripan vacas y vacas que caen al mar. Sobre Mariuca y Nanda La Chona, infusiones que todo lo matan, percebes con el sexo descomunal, gorriones que brotan de la tierra, vainas llenas de dientes, viejas que se alimentan de críos o un feto dentro de un mejillón. Pero, por encima de todo, ha escrito sobre un sitio que se niega a cambiar. Calabobos supone la invención de un nuevo relato mitológico, hermosísimo y afilado como las rocas de un acantilado.
Luis Mario (Cantabria, 1992) ha publicado tres novelas: El rastro que dejan las gotas (autopublicada, 2019), Cadencia de estornino (Salto de página, 2021) y Bello trozo redondo de mar (Sr. Scott, 2023). Trabajó durante años como creativo publicitario para marcas como Nike, Audi y Unicef, pero lo dejó todo para viajar por el mundo y escribir la que fue su primera novela. También impartió clases de inglés en un campo de refugiados sirios en Grecia y montó una biblioteca en un pueblo de Camboya. Actualmente trabaja como creativo publicitario autónomo desde un pueblito de Cataluña, donde también imparte y comparte un taller de escritura con sus vecinas.
Casa Poética Open Mic
with special guest
Gabriel Vargas Zapata (Venezuela)
Dec 14th
16h-18h
Join the participants of our poetry discussion group @casapoetica.madrid in an open mic session!
Spanish poet @irene_torra will host this poetic afternoon, where guest poet Gabriel Vargas Zapata (Venezuela, 1982) will share their work, discussing migration, writing and identity.
We’ll then open the mic and you can read your own poetry, a text by a poet you like, or simply join us and enjoy the readings.
This is a bilingual event (esp/eng) but ALL languages are welcome!
Please make sure to book your spot, as spaces are limited.
Cost €5
Drinks included!
Al umbral de la Plaza Mayor
con el autor
Olivier Sterckx, Ricardo Bustos, y
Reino de Cordelia
Dec 12th
19h30
Nos acompañará el autor Olivier Sterckx, Ricardo Bustos, presidente de la Asociación Residentes de la Plaza Mayor de Madrid y Aledaños, promotora de esta iniciativa, junto a Jesús Egido, editor de Reino de Cordelia.
En una conversación cercana y enriquecedora, compartirán las distintas etapas del proceso creativo: desde la idea que dio origen al proyecto, hasta los entrañables aportes fotográficos de los vecinos y los reportajes que dan vida a sus páginas.
Será una ocasión única para descubrir cómo la memoria colectiva se transforma en literatura visual y afectiva. ¡No faltes! Te esperamos para celebrar juntos este homenaje a la Plaza Mayor y sus historias vivas.
Madrid Launch of
‘The Relegation Reader’
FRI 5th Dec
20h
Please join us for the Madrid launch of The Relegation Reader, an anthology bringing together the work of some of the most exciting writers from the U.S, U.K., and Europe. Readings and conversation from Spanish contributors Óscar García Sierra and anthology editor Will Mountain Cox.
Óscar García Sierra is from León and lives in Madrid. He is the author of the poetry book Houston, I’m the Problem and the novels Facendera and Ropa tendida.
Will Mountain Cox is from Portland, Oregon, and lives in Paris, France. He is the author of the novel Roundabout.
About ‘The Relegation Reader’:
At a moment when artificial intelligence is challenging writers in every facet of artistic production, The Relegation Reader celebrates writing in its rawest, most evocative form. Each piece is an emerging star in a constellation of new poetry and prose that illuminates our shared world.
In this collection, edited by Paris-based author Will Mountain Cox (Roundabout and With Paris in Mind: Talking with Artists of This Generation), twenty-six contemporary writers in the US, UK, and Europe offer a fresh view of identity, technology, memory, and place.
Rafael Carvajal
New Voices:
en evening of poetry
(evento bilingüe)
Fri 28th November
20h
Speaking unedited verse in a new voice, in tongues, like the devils of the new testament.
Rafael Carvajal nace en Málaga en 1964. En 1976 emigra a Estados Unidos donde publica: Deep enough to dive in, Dogs and the flowers chey piss on y Bucketful of wing nuts a finales de los 80 con Drew Blood Productions Limited. También se involucra con el movimiento Open Mike, recitando en ciudades como Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Boston y más. En 1995 retorna a España instalándose en el madrileño barrio de Lavapiés donde toma contacto con el ambiente poético de Madrid y participa en diferentes recitales. Ha publicado, Mi psicóloga me dice que se jubila, colección hecho en Lavapiés, Amargord, Misántropo con buen corazón con L.U.P.I. ediciones, El cantón libre y ácrata de Lavapiés – Salvoconducto 95 y ,ahora, 25 odas y un poema interminable con Inflamavle ediciones que también produjo el documental sobre su vida y obra, Yo maté a Ralph Greene, disponible en Filmin. Desde 2022 ha colaborado con la compañía Teatro de los Invisibles en la obra Contención mecánica sobre las práctica psiquiátrica de atar a pacientes a la cama. En la obra hace de sí mismo como loco, activista y poeta.
The Desperate Literature
Prize Salon:
Celebrating the Shortlist
Fri 21st November
20h
‘Generous, soulful distillations. A tasting flight of prosaic kerosene. Each story ignited a flare in a forsaken corner of my mind. I can’t wait to experience more from these voices.’
—Henry Hoke
We celebrate one of our most exciting selections yet! Our 2025 shortlist covers a spectrum of experimental and boundary pushing fiction.
From a Faulknerian river story to the lushest, queerest body horror — from cross-country feminist malaise to cross-border love — prophets, mothers, labourers — a tedious apocalypse, post-capitalist hope — these eleven stories are brimming with magic, longing, and humour.
Join us for an evening of readings and then some drinks!
Joanna Walsh
Amateurs!
How We Built Internet Culture
and Why It Matters
Monday 10th November
20h
“Amateurs! is a eulogy and a manifesto for the internet revolution that came and went before our eyes, on our screens, beneath our fingertips: the revolution of the amateur.”
Helena Aeberli, Los Angeles Review of Books
The story of how you created internet culture and why it matters
Since the nineties, platforms have invited users to create in return for connection. From blogs to vlogs, tweets to memes: for the first time in history, making art became the fundamental form of communication.
What started as fun soon became currency, something vital to finding friends, work, and love. Then, as ‘meatspace’ job security eroded, online creativity became work itself. Now an internet presence is no longer optional, platforms increasingly charge users. Whatever it is we’re creating online, it isn’t amateur anymore. But is it art?
In this scintillating philosophical history of the internet, Joanna Walsh, author of Girl Online, examines how and why creativity became the price of digital existence.
Joanna Walsh is a multidisciplinary writer for print, digital and performance. The author of twelve books (several co-written with DIY AIs that she coded), her publishers include Semiotext(e), Bloomsbury and Verso. She is the creator of the digital narratives, seed-story.com and miss-communication.ie. Her work has been performed/exhibited at venues including IMMA, the ICA, BETA Festival Dublin, and Sample Studios Cork. She founded and directed the online activist projects @read_women (2014-18), and @noentry_arts (2019_2024). She was the 2020 Markievicz Awardee for Literature, the 2017 UK Arts Foundation fellow for literature; an Anthony Burgess Centenary Writer Fellow at the University of Manchester and a 2024 DAAD Artists in Berlin awardee (refused in solidarity with the Palestine).
Lauren Francis-Sharma
Casualties of Truth
Friday 14th November
20h
“I COULD NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN”
– Xochitl Gonzalez
“Casualties of Truth is a page-turner so engrossing that you never get distracted by the exceptional grace of its storytelling. Tense yet character-driven, Lauren Francis-Sharma has created a brilliant rumination on how we use the malleable clay of memory to sculpt our understanding of ourselves and the world.”
—Mat Johnson, author of Pym and Invisible Things
From the author of Book of the Little Axe, nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed ‘Til the Well Runs Dry, a riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg, South Africa.
Lauren Francis-Sharma, a Pushcart nominated writer, is author of Book of the Little Axe, a 2020 finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. Her critically acclaimed novel, ‘Til the Well Runs Dry was awarded the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the ALA. Her third novel, Casualties of Truth, a finalist for the 2025 Caricon Prize, was inspired by her time at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Amnesty Hearings. Lauren wrote the foreword to the latest edition of Cry, the Beloved Country, serves as Award Chair for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
Fatema Abdoolcarim
Tremble
an evening of poetry
Monday 17th November
20h
‘Tremble is a gift of profound proportions, conveying with her signature brilliant and caring gaze the variable inner and outer textures of life.’
– Gabrielle Bates
Tremble, Fatema Abdoolcarim’s debut collection of poems, is an intimate and involving sequence on fertility and faith. A memoir in verse, these poems relate encounters with the animal other, the uncertain, but always echoing the tender rituals of family, food, prayer. Abdoolcarim thinks through what it means to care – and to mother – at a time where atrocity makes those systems of loving seem out of reach. Tremble traces the sensual and unknown spaces of desire, creating a hopeful lyric in spaces of private and global loss.
Fatema Abdoolcarim was born and raised in Hong Kong to a Peshawari Pakistani mother and a Gujarati Indian father, and tells stories shaped by the textures of her upbringing and community. Trained in photography and fine arts in the US, she taught herself filmmaking with a DSLR. Her debut short documentary Heidi (Locarno, 2016) and her narrative short Sweet Lime (ZINEBI’65, 2023) have screened internationally. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester, where her research explored female desire in Islamic miniature painting. Her debut poetry collection, Tremble (Monitor Books), is out now. She is currently developing her first feature film, Hum, and a collaborative cookbook with poet Rebecca Hurst, inspired by the art of Leonora Carrington.