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Muriel Villanueva will discuss Shattered Families at the Brooklyn Book Festival

Literature.  New York, 13/09/2022

As Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But how do families break apart and splinter, and what remains for those who survive? In Titaua Peu’s Pina (translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman), outside forces bear down relentlessly on an already troubled Tahitian family, while in Namwali Serpell’s The Furrows and Muriel Villanueva’s The Left Parenthesis (translated by Megan Berkobien and María Cristina Hall) the memory of loss and grief continue to shadow and complicate the present. The talk will be moderated by Moderated by Anderson Tepper, co-chair of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s International Committee.


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This year’s Brooklyn Book Festival celebratory main Festival Day and Literary Marketplace (Oct. 2) returns to parks, plazas and venues surrounding Brooklyn Borough Hall. Plus, the Virtual Festival Day (Sept. 25) welcomes authors and audience from around the world to listen in on compelling author conversations. Children’s Day (Oct. 1) celebrates childhood reading with workshops, performances, readings and more. Throughout the Festival week, literary themed Bookend events (Sept. 25 – Oct. 3) bring poetry, film, performances, and more to  all five boroughs.

 

Muriel Villanueva (Valencia, 1976) is a writer, author of more than thirty literary works for all ages, including novels, storybooks, poems, plays and short films, as well as short publications in anthologies and online. She has been given more than a dozen awards, including J.M. Casero, Crítica dels Escriptors Valencians, Carlemany, Atrapallibres and the Llibreter. She has been translated into Spanish, English, Portuguese, Polish, Korean and Chinese. Her first novel translated into English is The Left Parenthesis (gtranslated by Megan Berkobien and María Cristina Hall, and published by Open Letter Books) 

Villanueva has a degree in Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature from the University of Barcelona, ​​a diploma in Music Education from the University of Valencia, and has been trained in Family Constellations at Espai Sistèmic i Humanista.As a trainer, she accompanies other people’s writing processes and organizes workshops and residencies from the Escriptura Natural project.

About The Left Parenthesis:

The narrator of this novel, a writer, arrives by train at Casetes Beach with her month-old daughter on her back. She prepares to spend a few weeks in one of the cottages by the sand. Her husband has recently passed away and she needs to open the parenthesis of her life: to forget something, and to discover something else. But the appearance of an overly assertive starfish precedes a series of disturbing events, and as the narrator begins to lose a hold on reality, we are immersed in the uncertain territory of allegory.

With a lively and direct style and overwhelming poetic force, Muriel Villanueva guides us through the daily motions of life, and at the same time a fantastic journey of a woman in search of her own maturity.

 

 

 

Brooklyn Book Festival

Shattered Families

Sunday, October 2nd, 2022

1:00pm

Center Stage (Columbus Park, Brooklyn NY)

 

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  • Generalitat de Catalunya Govern Illes Balears Ajuntament de Barcelona

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