2025: Marta Sanz from Spain
Spanish author Marta Sanz engages audiences in the DMV through readings, panels, and workshops during her 2025 Cheuse Center residency.
Spanish writer and literary critic Marta Sanz will participate in a series of literary events in the DMV area during her 2025 residency at the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University, in collaboration with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C. Sanz will be in the U.S. from September 26 to October 3, beginning in Washington, DC, before continuing to New York City.
During her residency, she will present her latest book, My Clavicle and Other Massive Misalignments (Unnamed Press, translated into English by Katie King), a semi-autobiographical work that blends humor, social commentary, and incisive literary insight.
Marta Sanz is an award-winning novelist, poet, essayist, and scholar, and one of Spain’s most celebrated contemporary writers. With a literary career spanning more than two decades, she has published fifteen novels and essay collections, including Los mejores tiempos (Debate, 2001), winner of the Ojo Crítico Prize for Fiction; Animales domésticos (Destino, 2003); and Susana y los viejos (Destino, 2006), which was a finalist for the 2006 Nadal Prize.
Her recent works include Farándula (2015); Círculo de lectores (2016), winner of the Herralde Prize for the Novel; Clavícula (2017); and Pequeñas mujeres rojas (2020), a crime novel that appeals to collective memory, all published by Anagrama.
Sanz holds a PhD in philology and is a critic for the El País literary supplement and for the magazine Mercurio. She was editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine Ni hablar and wrote for periodical publications like ABC and Viento Sur. While she has been published broadly in the Spanish-language world, My Clavicle marks her debut in English language translation. My Clavicle will be published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Akoya Press.
EVENTS
PRESENTATION AT ELAINE’S LITERARY SALON
On Sunday, September 28, at 12:00 pm. Free, RSVP.
At Elaine’s Literary Salon, 208 Queen St, Alexandria, VA 2231
Marta Sanz will present her book in conversation with translator Katie King. Attendees can enjoy a relaxed literary atmosphere, exploring the themes and creative process behind the book while discussing translation, humor, and Sanz’s unique literary worldview. A book signing, in collaboration with Old Town Books, will follow the presentation, offering an opportunity to meet the author and translator.
INTERNATIONAL WRITERS FESTIVAL AT BUSBOYS AND POETS
On Monday, September 29, from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. Free, RSVP.
At Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St NW, Washington, DC 20009
As part of the festival, Marta Sanz will be featured alongside her translator Katie King to discuss My Clavicle and Other Massive Misalignments, her first book published in English. Together, they will explore how humor, tragedy, and anatomy intertwine in this work that is part memoir, part medical mystery, and part social critique. The evening will also include a Q&A, a book signing, and readings by other distinguished voices, including Peter Cole, as well as a group reading session.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS VISIT
On Monday, September 29.
Sanz will contribute her recording to the Archivo de la Palabra at the Library of Congress, adding her voice to this important collection of Spanish-language literature. This event is closed to the public.
GMU DAY IN TRANSLATION
Tuesday, September 30, from 12 pm to 7 pm
At George Mason University, 4400 University Dr, Fairfax, VA 22030
Spanish writer Marta Sanz, this year’s Cheuse Center Visiting Writer from Spain, will be featured at GMU Day in Translation. She will participate in one of the day’s panels (Translating the Female Body at 3 pm), contributing her perspective, alongside networking, lunch, and a keynote by Peter Cole.
Marta Sanz joins Russian writer-in-exile Anna Starobinets and their translators, Katie King and Katherine E. Young, to explore how issues of women’s health and well-being translate across cultures and languages. Through prose, poetry, journalism, and epistolary non-fiction, the panel will discuss literary and cultural approaches to framing women’s experiences—from pregnancy loss to menopause—challenging both literary conventions and cultural taboos.
MY CLAVICLE
On an international flight to a conference, the author Marta Sanz notices a tiny bump beneath her skin, just below her clavicle, near her breast bone. So begins an inquiry that is at turns satirical detective story, philosophical inquiry, memoir, and pure poetry.
In Spanish, the title is Clavícula, which refers to the collarbone, but also makes a direct pun on the word clave or key. In the aftermath of her discovery, we realize that something fundamental has changed for her, and that whatever has happened, however elusive, it is something very real. At the same time, the mystery reflects in everything the author encounters, but especially the bodies of women, and especially women of a certain age.
My Clavicle is an autofiction by one of Spain’s most celebrated contemporary voices. The narration fractures like the author’s body, unfolding into a series of vignettes that maintain their tension throughout.
The difficulty of giving a name to Sanz’s pain, of even locating a precise place for it, provokes a number of reflections: about the edge that separates the body from scientific definitions and imagination; about the function of poetry; about our intolerance for psychological gray areas; about anxiety as a pathology of late stage capitalism; and, in the face of constantly dispiriting headlines, the perversion of a public health system. Ultimately, her attempts to define something impossible are channeled through her strange and roving pain, manifesting in curiosity, humor, and love.
She has found the best way to be a political writer: her language is like a body. She talks to you like nobody else can.
—ABC
One of the most harsh, beautiful, brutal and impious books that I have read in a long time.
—Leila Guerriero, El País