Chinese on the Beach: A conversation with author Vanessa Fabiano

CHINESE ON THE BEACH (Ybernia 2025) is set in the brief, electric window when China threw open its doors and the world came rushing in. Spanning the 1990s into the early 2000s, these stories track expats, locals, and returnees as they chase opportunity, reckon with radical transformation, and try not to fall through the cracks.

Author and TWS co-founder VANESSA FABIANO will be in conversation with journalist and literary translator ISOLDA MORIILLO. The discussion will touch on the broader themes that run through the stories, from socio-economic upheaval to Shanghai’s cutthroat social scene, and what it means to write about a recent past that already feels historical.

We’re thrilled to collaborate with Libreria Parent(h)esis for this event at their beautiful Madrid space. The conversation will be held in English and will include selected readings followed by audience Q&A. Come for the deep dive into all things China, and stay for the informal drinks and mingling!

VANESSA RUBRIA FABIANO is a Swiss-Italian-Spanish author whose fiction explores migration, class, and cultural displacement through the lens of geopolitics. Born to immigrant parents, she grew up fluent in six languages and has lived and worked across Europe, China, and the US. Trained in East Asian Studies and International Relations, she first traveled to China in 1994, and later worked in Beijing and Shanghai during the SARS outbreak. Alongside her writing, Vanessa has built a global career in tech and branding. She co-founded The Write Salon, a boutique literary nonprofit, and in 2024 curated the international literary festival No Place is an Island.

ISOLDA MORILLO is a Peruvian journalist and literary translator with decades of international experience. She was based in Beijing for 20 years and spent a decade working as a journalist for The Associated Press, covering major global stories on civil society, politics, and human rights. Parallel to her journalistic work, Morillo has published fiction in Chinese and translated into Spanish the work of contemporary Chinese writers including Pema Tseden, Zheng Xiaoqiong, Ai Qing, Shen Haobo, and Can Xue, with editions in Spain and across Latin America.

PARENT(H)ESIS is a new bookshop in Lavapiés, opened in November 2024 and run by Eitan and Giedre. It’s a bilingual space, with around 30% of the books in English and 70% in Spanish

Tickets: Free

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