Fantastic Loves

Andrea Lawlor has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs, and their writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Mutha, the Millions, jubilat, the Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers, and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Vintage), a 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards. It’s 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flaneur with a rich dating life. But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Paul transforms his body and his gender at will as he crosses the country––a journey and adventure through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.  Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his/her way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections.

Carolina de Robertis is a writer of Uruguayan origins and the author of The Gods of Tango, Perla, and the international bestseller The Invisible Mountain. Her novels have been translated into seventeen languages and have garnered a Stonewall Book Award, Italy's Rhegium Julii Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous other honors. She is also a translator of Latin American and Spanish literature and editor of the anthology Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times. She teaches at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Cantoras (Knopf), a revolutionary new novel about five wildly different women who find one another as lovers, friends, and ultimately, family. In 1977 Uruguay, a military government has crushed political dissent with ruthless force. In an environment where citizens are kidnapped, raped, and tortured, homosexuality is a dangerous transgression. And yet Romina, Flaca, Anita "La Venus," Paz, and Malena--five cantoras, women who "sing"—somehow, miraculously, find one another and then, together, discover an isolated, nearly uninhabited cape, Cabo Polonio, which they claim as their secret sanctuary.  A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit. At once timeless and groundbreaking, Cantoras is a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn.

José Ignacio Valenzuela, also known by the nickname Chascas, is a Chilean writer and screenwriter. He has published novels and short fiction, and has written more than twenty telenovelas and six feature films. His bestsellers in Latin America include Trilogía del malamor, Malaluna, and Mi Abuela la Loca. Valenzuela’s To the End of the World (Deletrea), is the first installment of the Trilogia. It’s a story of love, betrayal and fantasy, where a trip to the end of the world becomes the ultimate quest for survival. In it, we learn that when Angela receives an eerie text message from her estranged, best-friend Patricia, her heart stops. Something is off and Angela knows it. So she quickly embarks on a biting quest to Almahue, a small town in the Chilean Patagonia, which, according to the Malamor Legend, is cursed to live without love or face death. Deception and mystery unfold, as true love leaves Angela defying the legend she once brushed off and fighting alongside the entire town for their own lives. Writing about the Trilogía del Malamor, for Puerto Rico’s El Nuevo Dia, writer and critic Carmen Dolores Hernández noted that “Valenzuela has achieved with this trilogy something very difficult: a book series which is pleasant because of its storyline, full of constant action, fantasy and mystery, but also one which is suggestive to the eternal hero’s journey (…) It will not only captivate young readers but everybody who enjoys reading adventure stories.”   (Santiago, Chile, 1972) Narrador, dramaturgo, autor de libros para niños y jóvenes y guionista de cine y televisión. Reside en Estados Unidos. Ha publicado obras para adultos como Con la noche encima (1999), La mujer infinita (2010) y Salida de emergencia (2011). Para los niños y jóvenes ha dado a conocer ¿De qué color es tu sombra? (2014), Pepito y la calle más aburrida del mundo (2016), Mi abuela la loca (2015), Hashtag (2017), Mi tío Pachunga (2019) y la trilogía Malamor (integrada por tres novelas: Hacia el fin del mundo, La raíz del mal y El árbol de la vida). Presenta en la feria una nueva edición, preparada por SUMA, de su novela El filo de tu piel, en la que narra una compleja relación sentimental que tiene a la ciudad de Nueva York por escenario principal. Participa, además, en el VI Seminario de Literatura infantil y lectura.