Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora (I Leave You, Love, the Sea as My Pledge, 1975) was the work that inaugurated Carme Riera’s prolific literary career. This acclaimed book contained the seed of what she, as a writer and academic, would cultivate in her later work: accents and themes which, when she started writing, were seen as marginal. Riera was born in Mallorca. Her writing is permeated by the sea and, like the sea, it is variable, takes different forms, and adopts multiple registers.
Carme Riera is also a pioneering feminist who, in her texts, put into words experiences and links that had previously remained unnamed. She continues to expand our vocabulary of the world today and is therefore recognised as a key figure of contemporary literature in Catalan.
Carme Riera is joined in this conversation by Gemma Ruiz, a writer from a younger generation. This well-known journalist, who made her literary debut in 2016 with the novel Argelagues, has for years upheld the importance of female references in literature. In this encounter, after calling attention to the legacy of Montserrat Roig and Maria Aurèlia Capmany, she will celebrate another great woman writer of Catalan literature.
In this session, organised in collaboration with the first International Congress of Catalan Literature in Postmodernity, Kosmopolis brings together in dialogue the only two women with the distinction of having been awarded the Premi Sant Jordi (St George Prize) for the novel in the last twenty years.
