Denise_Mina_360pxThe Lisbon Book Fair, Lisbon

Saturday 25 May 6:30pm WEST

The Future of the Novel

Chaired by: Denise Mina. Panelists include Mathias Énard, Rosa Liksom, João Tordo and Dulce Maria Cardoso.

Author Biographies:

Denise Mina is the author of eleven novels, three graphic novels, three plays and many short stories. Two of her novels have been filmed by BBC television. She has won prizes, been nominated for prizes, judged and presented prizes and is starting to think they might be meaningless. She is a regular contributor to television and radio, presents documentaries and is currently finishing her first video piece ‘Multum in Parvo’ – a film about her extended family watching a film about her extended family making a film about her extended family.

Mathias Énard was born in 1972 in France. He studied Persian and Arabic and lived for many years in the Middle East. He is Professor of Arabic at the university of Barcelona. He has written five novels and won several literature prizes, including Zone, which won the Prix Decembre and the Prix du Livre Inter, and Parle-leur de batailles de rois et d’éléphants, which won the Prix Goncourt.

Rosa Liksom was born in 1958 in Ylitornio, far north in Finnish Lapland, in the “Meän” language area. Her parents were farmers and reindeer breeders. She wrote the first three of her books in “free town” of Kristiania, in Copenhagen, where she was working in a bakery and helping out at a local store. In 2011 her book, Hytti nro 6 (Compartment Number 6) was awarded the Finlandia prize. This year (2013) the same novel has been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Besides writing books, Rosa Liksom has also painted and made short films since 1985. She has created comic books, a colouring book and children’s books. Rosa currently lives in Helsinki.

João Tordo was born in Lisbon in 1975. He read Philosophy and studied Journalism and Creative Writing in London and New York. In 2001 he was the recipient of the New Authors Prize. He has published six novels: O Livro dos Homens Sem Luz (2004); Hotel Memória (2007); As Três Vidas (2008), winner of the José Saramago Literary Prize and shortlisted for the Portugal Telecom Prize in Brazil; O Bom Inverno (2010), shortlisted for the best Fiction Novel of the Portuguese Author’s Society and the Fernando Namora Literary Prize (the french translation, published by Actes Sud, was nominated for the European Literary Award); and Anatomia dos Mártires (2011), again shortlisted for the Fernando Namora Literary Prize. His novels have been published in seven countries, including France, Italy and Brazil. He also works as a columnist, translator, screenwriter and regularly teaches fiction workshops.

Dulce Maria Cardoso, born in Trás-os-Montes in 1964, is one of the most important literary voices in Portugal. She spent her childhood in Angola and returned to Portugal in 1975, shortly after Portugal’s Carnation Revolution and Angola’s independence. She studied law, worked as a lawyer and wrote scripts for the cinema. The author has received numerous prizes for her literary work, such as the European Union Prize for Literature 2009 for Os meus sentimentos and the Portuguese PEN Prize 2011 for O Chão dos pardais. O retorno, her latest novel, has been awarded the Special Prize of the Critics 2011 in Portugal, and was selected as Book of the Year 2011.