This year's Taylor lecture, ‘The Hidden Dance of Writer and Reader: Creative Tensions in Fiction', will be delivered by Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin.
In this lecture, Schweblin explores how fiction emerges from the tensions and interplay between the writer's use of language and the reader's imagination. The talk will be in English.
Schweblin (Buenos Aires, 1978) is one of the most acclaimed contemporary authors working in Spanish today. Her novel Fever Dream (Distancia de rescate) was a finalist for the International Man Booker Prize and was translated by Megan McDowell (who has rendered all of Schweblin’s works into English). Her collection of short stories, Pájaros en la boca (Mouthful of Birds), and her novel Kentukis (Little Eyes) were longlisted for the same prize. In 2022, her short story collection Seven Empty Houses (Siete casas vacías) won the National Book Award for Translated Literature. In 2021, Distancia de rescate was adapted for Netflix by the director Claudia Llosa and the author herself. Schweblin lives in Berlin. In 2020/2021, she held the Samuel Fischer Visiting Professorship for Literature in the Peter Szondi-Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft at the Free University of Berlin. She has won multiple awards around the world and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages.
