Separated by geography but united by the human condition, two searingly observant writers offer intense and unsettling insights into modern life.

 In two novels, two women struggle to find their place in the world. In Margarita García Robayo’s 2017 novella, Holiday Heart, translated by Charlotte Coombe, Lucia and her husband are falling apart. While Pablo longs for his Colombian home, Lucia draws a sense of self from her rootlessness in the US. In The Men, Sandra Newman’s latest work, Jane’s life is blown apart by an incomprehensible event that sees her husband and son disappear completely – along with everyone else who was born with a Y chromosome. In the ordinary and the extraordinary, these authors find new ways to articulate the messy realities of families and gender relations.

The authors will be in conversation about their novels with RTE Arts journalist, Paula Shields.

Margarita García Robayo, born in Colombia in 1980, is an author, an essayist, and a short-story writer.

Sandra Newman is a Boston native, and author of four novels as well as several works of non-fiction. The Country of Ice Cream Star was longlisted for the Bailey’s Prize for Fiction.

‘García Robayo’s prose is concise and startling, her voice versatile and capable of packing a serious punch.’ – LA Review of Books

‘Astonishing… capable of eliciting from even the most jaded reader… unqualified admiration’ – Sarah Perry (on Sandra Newman)

Presented in association with the Embassy of Colombia in Ireland.