LEXINGTON, Ky.—The Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C., have collaborated with Transylvania University and Davidson College to bring three Spanish writers to Lexington to participate in the 62nd annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference this week.
Two conference sessions are dedicated to literature from the region of León, Spain. Authors from this area have received many prestigious national and international literary prizes.
Essayist and journalist Pedro García Trapiello (Diario de León), journalist Susana Martín García (El Mundo) and poet/artist Juan Carlos Mestre will speak about contemporary Spanish literature and journalism at Transylvania’s Jazzman’s Café in the Glenn Building on Friday, April 17, at 11 a.m. Transylvania received a generous gift from alumna Katie C. Bolin to help sponsor the event.
At 7:30 p.m. the writers will conduct a roundtable discussion on literature and journalism by Leonese writers in the University of Kentucky’s Gaines Center, Bingham Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street. Both events are free and open to the public.
Spanish professors Veronica Dean-Thacker (Transylvania University), Shelby Thacker (Asbury College) and Mary S. Vásquez (Davidson College) have organized these sessions to highlight the quality and variety of the literary production from Leonese writers, such as Andrés Trapiello (who, in 2004, published his sequel to Cervantes’ Spanish masterpiece, Don Quijote), Julio Llamazares, Josefina Aldecoa, José Maríá Merino, Margarita Merino, Luis Mateo Díéz, Antonio Gamoneda, Juan Carlos Mestre and Juan Pedro Aparicio.
The Kentucky Foreign Language Conference is the longest-running language and literature conference in the United States and is directed by Susan Carvalho of the Department of Hispanic Studies at UK. Approximately 750 professors and graduate students will attend the three-day conference at UK, and many will present their most recent literary and linguistic research.
For more information about the session at Transy, contact Veronica Dean-Thacker at vdeanthacker@transy.edu or (859) 233-8272.