Writer in Residence 2012: Mercedes Abad

In April Mercedes Abad is the Writer in Residence for the UU Faculty of Humanities and City2Cities. At the invitation of the University of Utrecht she resides in the city during the whole festival and gives several lectures and workshops. In cooperation with the Instituto Cervantes and the department Spanish language and culture of the Utrecht University various other activities about her work will be organised as well. On Wednesday April 25 Abad reads the annual Belle van Zuylen lecture.

Abad is the fourth Writer in Residence in Utrecht. Previous years we welcomed the Italian writer and cultural philosopher Claudio Magris (2009), the Dutch writer and essayist Bas Heijne (2010), and the Dutch-Scottish writer Michel Faber (2011).

Mercedes Abad (1961) was born in Barcelona and is a translator, writer and journalist. In the 1980s she made name with her collections of short stories. For the highly praised collection stories called Amigos y fantasmas she won the Mario Vargas Llosa Prize in 2004. Earlier, in 2001, she published her first novel Sangre, in which Abad describes a difficult mother-daughter relationship in a postmodern way. Besides stories and novels Abad also writes plays and adaptations for the theatre.