About this Event
Third Place Books welcomes Kirmen Uribe to our Ravenna store! Uribe will be discussing his novel, Bilbao–New York–Bilbao, translated from Basque to English by Elizabeth Macklin. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required in advance.
This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
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This event is free to attend. Registration is required in advance.
About Bilbao–New York–Bilbao. . .
The day he knew he was going to die, our narrator’s grandfather took his daughter-in-law to the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, the de facto capital of the Basque region of northern Spain, to show her a painting with ties to their family. Years later, her son Kirmen traces those ties back through the decades, knotting together moments from early twentieth-century art history with the stories of his ancestors’ fishing adventures—and tragedies—in the North Atlantic Ocean. Elegant, fluid storytelling is punctuated by scenes from Kirmen’s flight, from security line to airport bar to jet cabin, and reflections on the creative writing process.
This original and compelling novel earned debut author Kirmen Uribe the prestigious National Prize for Literature in Spain in 2009. Exquisitely translated from Basque to English by Elizabeth Macklin, Bilbao–New York–Bilbao skillfully captures the intersections of many journeys: past and present, physical and artistic, complete and still unfolding.
Bilbao–New York–Bilbao is the second book commissioned for the Spatial Species series, edited by Youmna Chlala and Ken Chen. The series investigates the ways we activate space through language. In the tradition of Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Spatial Species titles are pocket-sized editions, each keenly focused on place. Instead of tourist spots and public squares, we encounter unmarked, noncanonical spaces: edges, alleyways, diasporic traces. Such intimate journeying requires experiments in language and genre, moving travelogue, fiction, or memoir into something closer to eating, drinking, and dreaming.
Kirmen Uribe writes in Basque. He is one of the most relevant and widely translated writers of his generation in Spain. He has written two collections of poems and four novels. Uribe won Spain's National Prize for Literature for his first novel, Bilbao–New York–Bilbao. His works have appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, among many other journals. He was selected for the Iowa International Writers Program in 2017 and was awarded the New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellowship for 2018–2019. He is now based in New York City, where he teaches Creative Writing at New York University.
About Third Place Books
Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Third Place Books, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, United States
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