BIBLIOTOPIA 2021 | Jorge Comensal and Susana Moreira Marques in conversation (EN)

Life Interrupted: On Disease and Mortality

Jorge Comensal, a Mexican writer and journalist, was born in Mexico City in 1987, where he studied literature. He has received grants from the Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. His work has appeared in « The Paris Review », « Nexos », « Revista de la Universidad de México », « VICE », and « The Literary Review ». He is also part of the Environmental Board of « Este País » from 2018. His first novel, « The Mutations »(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), a tragicomedy dissecting the experience of cancer and its effects on families and society, was a critical success and has been translated into many languages. Jorge Comensal is also the author of an essay about the nature of reading, « Yonquis de las letras » (La Huerta Grande, 2017).

Susana Moreira Marques, a Portuguese journalist and writer, born in 1967 in Porto, lives now in Lisbon. Her writing has appeared in « Granta », « Literary Hub », « Words Without Borders », « Feuilleton », « Lettre International », and many other publications. As a journalist she worked for the BBC World Service, « Público », « Jornal de Negócios », and won several prizes, including the UNESCO Human Rights and Integration Journalism Award. In 2019 she was the recipient of a Grant for Literary Writing, awarded by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture. She is also the author of the memoir « Quanto Tempo Tem um Dia (How Long is a Day) » and « Now and at the Hour of Our Death » (And Other Stories, 2012): this work of narrative non-fiction is a record of her travels with palliative care professionals to remote corners of Portugal, and blends reportage, travelogue with meditation on death.

La Fondation Jan Michalski, le 5 juin 2021