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Antonio Lozano interviews the British writer Ian McEwan on the occasion of the presentation of his latest novel Nutshell. The talk will take place on 9th of March as a part of the continuous programme of Kosmopolis.

Nine authors will speak first-hand about their experience as writers, gender stereotypes, subversive maternities and historical struggles. We will count with a wide array of female constellations to talk about changes in roles and in society.

German film director and writer Werner Herzog will be talking with Paul Holdengräber, founder and director of The New York Public Library’s Live programme, in a discourse entitled “Ecstasy and Terror in the Mind of God”.

A hundred years have passed since the first edition of the novel “The Walk” and Kosmopolis wants to pay tribute to Robert Walser with a theater play that consists in a walking tour that runs through three different Barcelona districts. With the help of the actor and poet Esteban Feune de Colombi, a group of walkers wander by the city along with the artist Joan Fontcuberta and the writers Marta Sanz and Alicia Kopf, who will also participate on a debate with Marc Caellas.

PJ Harvey will be taking part in the 2017 edition of Kosmopolis with a poetry recital that will be the closing event for this year’s festival, on 26 March. Since the publication of The Hollow of the Hand (2015), PJ Harvey has appeared at a number of international literary festivals and this is the first time that a reading of her poems is to be presented in Spain.

Beyond the clichés about men wearing kilts and villages hidden in the mist, Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, is one of Europe’s most outstanding creative centres. And some of the most outstanding names of «Neu! Reekie!» festival will be at Kosmopolis.

Now, at this turn of the century, the production and reading of graphic novels—books that use illustration and comic strips to tell stories with the scope and ambition of a novel—have been normalised. Stories that may be fictional, autobiographical or journalistic. Or even stories that are not necessarily narrative, but essayistic. Thinking in images, thinking in panels, thinking visually: human beings have always done it, but now the creative community and the editorial industry agree on the importance of developing the potential of these hybrid languages.

Science fiction literature is about apocalyptic worlds and dystopian futures in which climate change menaces the survival of the planet. But some writers, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, tell a different story. This is the literature of change.

With the slogan “When everything changes”, the 2017 edition of Kosmopolis will revolve around the change of culture and the culture of change. From 22 to 26 March, it will be presenting a five-day programme that brings together established authors and new voices to discuss some of the main challenges facing culture and literature in their most open concept.