Spanish Granta authors at the Cervantes Observatory at Harvard University

Writers featured in Granta’s new anthology talk about contemporary Spanish literature with guest editor Valerie Miles at the Observatory of Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures at Harvard University.

In this second encounter with Granta, organized in collaboration with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, DC, the Observatorio will host an evening’s conversation and reading with three of the most outstanding young writers to emerge from the Spanish-speaking world. In conversation with Valerie Miles –editor of the special Spanish issue published by the prestigious literary magazine from Cambridge– they will explore the themes, trends, and issues at the heart of this particularly burgeoning moment for contemporary Spanish letters. The three authors will also share excerpts of their works in original Spanish and English translation.

About the authors

David Aliaga (1989) is a writer recognized by Granta as one of the best young Spanish-language novelists of the last decade. His fiction books include Y no me llamaré más Jacob (2016) and El año nuevo de los árboles (2018), some of whose short stories have been translated into English or German. Aliaga is a specialist in representation of Jewish identity, both in contemporary literature and in comic books, and in 2018 he co-directed Séfer, the Jewish Book Festival of Barcelona. Last year, the city of Barcelona awarded him with the Montserrat Roig scholarship for creative writing.

Alejandro Morellón (1985) is the author of the short story books La noche en que caemos (Monteleón Prize, 2012), El estado natural de las cosas (Gabriel García Márquez Prize, 2017), El peor escenario posible (Ignacio Aldecoa Prize, 2022), the novel Caballo sea la noche (Candaya, 2019) and the book of mistic poems Un dios extranjero (San Juan de la Cruz Mistic Poetry Prize). In 2021 was included by Granta magazine in their Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists list. Currently he lives in Madrid.

Valerie Miles, an American writer, editor, and translator, co-founded Spanish Granta in Barcelona in 2003. She has overseen the Spanish language imprints Emecé and Alfaguara, where she worked with writers like Susan Sontag, Gunter Grass, John Banville, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Javier Marías, and her work of several years arranging Roberto Bolaño’s archive led to the first exhibition of his private papers, Archivo Bolaño, 1977–2003, which she curated with Barcelona’s Center for Contemporary Culture. Her first book is A Thousand Forests in One Acorn, and among her recent translations are Juan Eduardo Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols for NYRB, and Milena Busquets’ novel This Too Shall Pass, which won a PEN Translates Award and was a finalist for the Dublin Literature Prize. She teaches in the postgraduate programs of Literary Translation and Creative Writing at Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Irene Reyes-Noguerol (1997) has a BA in Hispanic Philology at the University of Seville and has completed a Creative Writing Workshop at the Camilo José Cela University of Madrid. She is currently working as a Spanish Language and Literature teacher. Reyes-Noguerol has won several awards, both in national and international story contests, and her texts have appeared, so far, in 14 anthologies. At the age of 18 she published her first solo book, Caleidoscopios, followed by De Homero y otros dioses (2018).