Award-winning Colombian author, Margarita García Robayo, will be talking to renowned Mexican author Jazmina Barrera about her new novel The Delivery (translated by Megan McDowell). Together they will discuss Margarita’s oeuvre and topics such as what it means to be a Latin American author today.

More Charco Press (UK based) books will be available for purchase, including Holiday Heart.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance. 

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From the acclaimed author of Fish Soup, a novel of motherhood, memory, and possibility just this side of the uncanny.

In The Delivery, an enormous package arrives that can’t be opened, Agatha the cat appears and disappears, half-finished buildings punctuate the horizon–semi-ordinary happenings that take on an otherworldly cast if you look at them sideways. And nothing is stranger, in this high rise apartment far from home, than the tenuous bonds of family that hold us together, or don’t. The narrator works, zooms with her sister, makes plans for the future (a writing residency, a child), and tentatively probes her past, while subtle fissures open up around her, changing her life forever. As she says about her childhood home, “Sometimes I get curious…but I don’t ask, because the answer could come with information I’d rather not know.” By turns tender and biting, this is Robayo’s finest work yet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margarita García Robayo was born in 1980 in Cartagena, Colombia, and now lives in Buenos Aires where she teaches creative writing and works as a journalist and scriptwriter. She is the author of several novels, including Hasta que pase un huracán (Waiting for a Hurricane) and Educación Sexual (Sexual Education, both included in Fish Soup), Holiday Heart, and Lo que no aprendí (The Things I have Not Learnt). She is also the author of a book of autobiographical essays Primera Persona (First Person, forthcoming with Charco Press) and several collections of short stories, including Worse Things, which obtained the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize in 2014 (also included in Fish Soup). Her books have been published widely and praised in Latin America and Spain and have been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Hebrew, French, Danish and Turkish. Delivery is her third book to appear in English after the very successful Fish Soup (selected by the TLS as one of the best fiction titles of 2018) and Holiday Heart (Winner of the English PEN Award).

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Jazmina Barrera is the author of Cuerpo extraño (Foreign Body), Cuaderno de faros (On Lighthouses), Linea nigra, the children’s book Los nombres de los animales (Animal’s Names) and Punto de cruz (Cross Stitch). She was awarded the Latin American Voices prize by Literal Publishing in 2013 and was a finalist of the following awards: National Book Critics Cricle’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Autobiography Prize, CANIEM’s Book of the year award and the Von Rezzori Award. Her work has been published in nine countries and translated into English, Italian, Dutch and French. She is the co-founder of the Mexican publishing house, Ediciones Antílope.

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ACCESSIBILITY: Recirculation is a wheelchair-accessible space with one ramp from the street level down to the store. Most of the shelves are on wheels and can be moved to provide additional access. The bathrooms are not yet ADA compliant and do not yet have a changing table but are gender neutral. The events are mic’d for sound and videos are captioned when possible. Free ASL interpretation is available for most programs upon request. Please email events@wordupbooks.com to request interpretation as early as possible. If you have specific questions about the space or how an event can be made more accessible to you, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@wordupbooks.com.