April 6: Award-winning author gives lecture in Spanish
FREDERICK, Md.—Hood College’s annual spring Colloquium Series continues with a lecture April 6 at 7 p.m. in the College’s Whitaker Campus Center, Room 220.
Maria Barbal, award-winning author of novels, short stories, juvenile novels and a play, will give a lecture in Spanish entitledMy Narrative Impulses. Translation will be provided by Roser Caminals-Heath, Ph.D., professor of Spanish.
A book signing will follow the lecture.
Barbal will discuss the subjects of her writings—women in rural Catalonia in northeastern Spain who are experiencing trauma such as war or immigration and subsequent alienation. Known for her mastery of rural colloquial Catalan, her native language, and her poetic style, she gives voice to humble, obscure characters.
Her work has been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. Her first novel, Stone in a Landslide, first published in 1985, has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 60,000 copies in Germany.
Barbal’s lecture is part of Escriptor de l’Any, a national program that brings a Catalan author to the United States each year. The initiative was created by Caminals-Heath in association with the North American-Catalan Society, and is supported by grant funds and other participating institutions. In addition to Hood, Barbal will visit New York University, the University of Missouri in Columbia and Georgetown Universities.
The final event will be a screening of the film ET later this spring.
This year’s colloquium theme, Home, focuses on the many components that define a sense of place and home and, in turn, shape individual and cultural identities.
The series is funded in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant.
For more information about the colloquium series, contact Katy Fulfer, Ph.D., NEH Libman Professor of the Humanities, at fulfer@hood.edu.