The Diplomat
The Instituto Cervantes will hold, during the week of June 6-10, the second edition of its great annual event for literature in Spanish, which this year will take place on five continents, specifically in Australia, India, France, Senegal and the USA.
Benengeli 2022. International Week of Literature in Spanish will be held at the Instituto Cervantes centers in Sydney, New Delhi, Toulouse, Dakar and Chicago and will feature the participation of more than 40 Spanish, English and French-speaking authors, with ‘realism’ as the central theme, the institution said in a press release.
Among the participating authors are Nicaragua’s Sergio Ramirez, Peru’s Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Guatemala’s Eduardo Halfon, Argentina’s Luisa Valenzuela, Venezuela’s Miguel Gomes and Spain’s Rosa Montero, Ignacio Martinez de Pison, Soledad Puertolas, Jose Manuel Fajardo, Marta Barrio and Javier Moreno.
The second edition of this initiative, which will disseminate to the world an outstanding and plural sample of the best literature in Spanish, will be presented in a mixed format -online and in person- with face-to-face round tables, interviews, video presentations and radio dialogues. The meetings, accessible to a worldwide audience in Spanish, English or French, can be followed on the Youtube channels of the Cervantes centers in Sydney, New Delhi, Toulouse, Dakar, Chicago, and through podcasts on the Instituto Cervantes Ivoox platform.
Benengeli 2022, curated by writer Nicolás Melini, will bring together authors from fifteen Spanish-speaking countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. It will also include meetings with storytellers from the host countries of this edition, Andrew Pippos (Australia), Geetanjali Shree (India), Lydie Salvayre (France), Ken Bugul (Senegal) and Frederick de Armas (Cuba-USA), with the aim of promoting dialogue between different literary traditions in different languages.
In addition to the aforementioned writers, there will be voices such as those of Piedad Bonnet (Colombia), Katya Adaui (Peru), Magela Baudoin (Bolivia), Carlos Cortés Zúñiga (Costa Rica), Selva Almada (Argentina), Rodrigo Blanco Calderón (Venezuela), Evelio Rosero (Colombia), Fernanda Trías (Uruguay), Vicente Luis Mora (Spain), Mayra Santos Febres (Puerto Rico), Carlos Franz (Chile), Ronaldo Menéndez (Cuba), Pedro Crenes (Panama), Antonio José Ponte (Cuba), Santiago Gil (Spain) and Jacinta Escudos (El Salvador), who will present the elements that constitute the axis of their work and the relationship of love, distance or rejection that each of them experiences with the realistic discourse that seems to define a good part of the universal narrative of this moment of the 21st century.
The International Week of Letters in Spanish takes its name from Cide Hamete Benengeli, the supposed Arabic historian who narrates the story of Don Quixote. This initiative of the Instituto Cervantes is supported by more than a dozen cultural institutions and organizations in Buenos Aires, Lima, La Paz, Bogota, Caracas, San Jose, Costa Rica, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Panama City, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de La Palma, Seville and Madrid.
