Reading Group with East Bristol Books: Chiquitita by Pedro Carmona-Alvarez
About this Event
Marisol's country is collapsing. A military coup sends the five-year-old and her family fleeing into the night. They seek shelter in a refugee camp where her parents try to protect her from danger while they await asylum abroad.
Marisol spends her adult life trying to forget her childhood, the aunts and uncles she left behind and the friends whose names she no longer recalls. But when her partner starts to ask about her past, she finds herself confronting the memories that haunt her.
Chiquitita is a tender novel about flight and exile, the passing of time and the experiences that remain with us, refusing erasure.
East Bristol Books co-founders Dan Eltringham and Andrés Anwandter will facilitate a conversation around the book and the topics addressed by Carmona-Alvarez.
This reading group is part of the Summer 2026 Spike Island Associates programme, The Texture of Dreams, drawing on the themes that underpin the exhibitions by Tohé Commaret and Nancy Lupo, currently on view in Spike Island’s galleries.
Preparation:
Please purchase a copy of the book and read it in advance of the event.
You can purchase the book with a 10% discount from East Bristol Books - either purchase it from their shop in Old Market (say that you're attending the reading group to get the discount) or buy it from their website with the promo code EBBSpike002
East Bristol Books
East Bristol Books is a small independent bookshop on Old Market, the historic eastern gateway to Bristol's city centre. Radical, diverse, independent-minded, and community-orientated, EBB reflects the nature and values of East Bristol.
EBB specialise in independent, small-press and DIY publishing and culture, with particular emphasis on poetry, fiction in translation, and politics. EBB is also home to a shifting array of print ephemera: chapbooks, pamphlets, mags and zines. As well as literature, we love music, art, exploratory non-fiction, critical writing, the weird, the folky, the rooted (in the right way), and place, landscape, and our nonhuman neighbours.
http://eastbristolbooks.co.uk
Instagram @ebb_bristol
Image credit: (Left) 'Chiquitita' by Pedro Carmona-Alvarez. (Right) Dan Eltringham and Andrés Anwandter. Image courtesy East Bristol Books. Photography by @JohnWong.Photo
Private Event
This is a private event for members of Spike Island community only. This includes Spike Island Associates, Spike Island Studio Artists, Spike Island staff, Spike Island Workspace members, UWE Bristol School of Art staff and students, Spike Print Studio members and Spike Island's cultural tenants.
If you would like to find out more about our community or to join the Spike Island Associates programme, find out more here or email [email protected].
Access Needs
If you have any access requirements that you'd like to discuss, or if there's anything we can do to make this event more accessible for you, please email [email protected] or call our reception on 0117 929 2266.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00 to GBP 3.96
