LITerally Ep. 30 - Espido Freire

“Intimidating and Illuminating,” as quoted in the most recent article in SLUG Magazine, is the only way to describe our conversation with Author Espido Freire, along with Isabel Asensio, Professor of Spanish, and Electra Gamon Fielding, Associate Professor of Spanish.

Her extensive, impressive, and accomplished bio is below. We were so fortunate to talk with the 2018-19 Hurst Artist/Scholar-in-Residence at Weber State University.

Thank you, again, Isabel, for inviting us along.

-

Epido Freire Bio:

Espido Freire is a young prolific writer whose fictional and non-fictional work has had a major reception, both by the public and the critics. She is one of the most promising writers of Hispanic narrative. She was born in Bilbao on July 16, 1974. After spending some years studying Early Music Studies, she graduated with a degree in English Literature from the University of Deusto, where she also completed a Master’s Degree in Editing. While at the University of Deusto, she founded two creative writing journals. She is still involved with the University of Deusto’s cultural affairs.

She published her first novel, Irlanda (1998), when she was only 23 years old. The novel received the Millepage Award in 1999, given by the French librarians to the best foreign work. She published her second novel in 1999, Donde siempre es octubre, immediately followed by Melocotones helados, for which she won the Planeta Prize (best-known literary award in Spain). At that point, she was only 25 years old, which meant she had become the youngest novelist awarded with the Planeta. A year later, she received the Qué Leer Award for Melocotones helados, given by the readers to the best Spanish novel. Since then, she has dabbled into other genres such as short story, essays, young adult literature, and poetry, and has never disappointed the critics. As an essayist, she has published When eating is a hell (2002), a research work on young women dealing with bulimia, a disease she suffered when she was young. For a comprehensive list of her work, visit the official website above.

She also writes for newspapers and magazines, and works as a freelance literary translator. Critics view her as one of the fresher and most interesting voices in the Spanish literary field, and the excellent reviews on her first novel have been repeated more than once ever since. Her work has been translated into English, French, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Italian, Greek, and Serbian. She is interested in Creative Writing and usually teaches writing workshops at different universities and cultural institutions. She has opened her own School of Creative Writing, E+F, in Madrid.