Jazmina Barrera and Megan McDowell — on Elena Garro

Third Place Books welcomes Jazmina Barrera and National Book Award-winning translator Megan McDowell for the special release of two books—Barrera's , translated by Christina MacSweeney, and McDowell's translation of Elena Garro's story collection .

Elena Garro (1916–1998) was a novelist, playwright, short story writer, journalist, and the inventor of magical realism, though she rejected the term as “a cheap marketing label.” The author of over 40 books, she wrote about the violence embedded in everyday life, with a focus on children, women, and indigenous people.

The Queen of Swords is now longlisted for the National Book Award and the !

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In what was at first meant to be a short essay about the influential Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1988), Jazmina Barrera’s deep curiosity and exploration give us a singular portrait of a complex life.

Sifting through the writer’s archives at Princeton, Barrera is repeatedly thwarted in her attempt to fully know her subject. Traditional means of research—the correspondence, photos, and books—serve only to complicate and cloud the woman and her work.Who was Elena Garro, really?

She was a writer, a founder of “magical realism”, a dancer. A devotee to the tarot and theI Ching. A socialite and activist on behalf of indigenous Mexicans. She was a mother and a lover who repeatedly shook off (and cheated on) her manipulative husband, Nobel-laureate Octavio Paz. And above all, she wrote with simmering anger and glittering imagination.

The Queen of Swords is a portrait of a woman that also serves as an alternative history of Mexico City; a cry-out for justice; and an homage to the unknowable. It transcends mere biography, supplanting something tidy and authoritative for a sprawling experiment in understanding.

Short stories from the “cursed mother of magical realism” (El Mundo), now in English for the first time

A woman flits between two realities centuries apart, as scenes from the violent conquest of Mexico bleed their way into her comfortable contemporary life. Two little girls visit the home of a sorcerer who tortures women named after the days of the week. Girls become dogs, a laborer hides human bones in bricks he’ll use to build a new development, and an old woman appears at an acquaintance’s door one night with a knife and a bone-chilling confession.

With The Week of Colors, Elena Garro laid the groundwork for the literary movements that would shape the landscape of Latin American fiction and beyond. Here you’ll find the early roots of magical realism, feminist horror, and anticolonial speculative fiction. In The Week of Colors, Garro highlights the violence in our history, our homes, and our hearts, in vivid color.

Jazmina Barrera was born in Mexico City in 1988. She is the author of six books in Spanish: Cuerpo extraño, Cuaderno de faros, Linea nigra, Los nombres de los animals (a Children’s Book), Punto de cruz and La reina de espadas. She has also co-written the books Nuestro plan de fiesta (with Camila Fabbri) and Rituales para la amistad (with Daniela Rea and Elvira Liceaga). Her books have been published in nine countries and translated to English, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and French. This is her fourth book translated by Christina MacSweeney and published by Two Lines, including Linea Nigra, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Autobiography Prize. She is editor and co-founder of Ediciones Antílope. She lives in Mexico City. (Photo credit: Paulette Cabrera)

Megan McDowell has translated many of the most important Latin American writers working today. Her translations have won numerous prizes, including the National Book Award, and have been nominated for the International Booker Prize four times. She is from Richmond, Kentucky, and lives in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo credit: Maria Ródenas Sáinz de Baranda)

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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