"a story’s existence, even if not well defined or well assigned, even if only in its formative stage, just barely latent, emits vague but urgent emanations."
Byobu's every interaction trembles with possibility and faint menace. A crack in the walls of his house, marring it forever, means he must burn it down. A stoplight asks what the value of obedience is, what hopefulness it contains, and what insensible anarchy it defies. In brief episodes, aphorisms, and moments of spiritual turbulence and gentle scrutiny, reside a wealth of habits, worries, curiosities, pleasures, peculiarities, and efforts to understand.
Representative of the modesty and complexity of Ida Vitale’s poetic universe, Byobu flushes the world with meaning and playfully offers another way of inhabiting the every day.
**Ida Vitale **(Uruguay, 1923) is a poet, translator, essayist, and literary critic. In 2018, she was just the fifth woman to receive the prestigious Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the highest recognition for literature in Spanish. In addition to the Cervantes Prize, she has also received the FIL Literature Prize (2018), Max Jacob Prize (2017), Federico García Lorca Poetry Prize (2016), Reina Sofía Poetry Prize (2015), Alfonse Reyes Prize (2014), and Octavio Paz Prize (2009), as well as many other honours, including being named by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential women of 2019.
**Sean Manning **is a literary translator and a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. He has translated numerous literary texts including Spanish poet Azahara Palomeque’s _American Poems _(Coolgrove Press, 2020), Puerto Rican writer Eduardo Lalo’s The Elements, Uruguayan philosopher Carlos Pereda’s _Lessons in Exile _(Brill, 2018), and the work of Cuban writers Lorenzo García Vega and Ana Luz García. He is currently working on Carlos Pereda’s most recent book Destructions and Nomadic Thought; book-length works by Diego Vecchio and Lorenzo García Vega; and various texts by Ricardo Piglia, Ana Camblong, and Daniel Attala for a volume dedicated to the work of Argentine writer Macedonio Fernández.
Considered to be one of the authors forming part of the 'new Latin American Boom’ of women writers, Fernanda Trías (Uruguay, 1976) is without doubt one of the most prominent literary voices in today’s River Plate region and in all of Latin America. Her books have been published in Spain as well as in Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, and France.
Annie McDermott is the translator of a dozen books from Spanish and Portuguese, by such writers as Mario Levrero, Ariana Harwicz, Brenda Lozano, Fernanda Trías and Lídia Jorge. She was awarded the Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate, and her translation of Brickmakers by Selva Almada was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. In 2024 her translation of Selva Almada's novel Not a River was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, and is now based in Hastings in the UK.
