Festival 42

The sixth Festival 42, the fantasy genre literary award of Barcelona, is already knocking on the door. It will take place from November 4 to 8 at the Fabra i Coats complex. The curation falls this year to cultural journalist Karen Madrid Ribas and Susana Vallejo, writer and founder of the online school Phantastica. The programme revolves around different thematic axes, such as ancestral and contemporary fears, world creation, art in fantasy genres, and reflections on artificial intelligence. The festival will also include moments to pay tribute to Richard Matheson, one of the fathers of contemporary horror and fantasy, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, and to the architect Antoni Gaudí. There will be Naomi Ishiguro, author of Los huérfanos de Rainshadow, which deals with political alternatives against the fears of the present; Django Wexler, writer and specialist in artificial intelligence, known for the biography El Señor Oscuro; Agustín Fernández Mallo, who in his latest novel fuses AI and fallen angels; Jaume Oliver Ripoll, winner of the Ciutat de Palma award with a time-travel uchronia; Alicia Kopf, visual artist and author of Memòria d'Eco, on technological mediation and self-representation; and Carlos di Urarte, specialist in grimdark fantasy and one of the most outstanding emerging voices in the genre. Consult all the details of Festival 42.