Velia Vidal
Monday 27th May
Topping & Company Booksellers of Edinburgh, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
7.10pm
7.30pm
We are very excited to partner again in 2024 with one of our favourite independent publishers, Charco Press, and celebrate translated fiction together in the Bookshop. Join us as we welcome Velia Vidal for the publication of Tidal Waters - an epistolary, fictional account of one woman moving towards happiness in the black community of Colombia's Pacific coast.
N.B. Your voucher for this event is redeemable against a copy of Tidal Waters (in English, translated by Annie McDermott ) or in its original language Aguas de estuario (in Spanish). Signed copies of both editions will be available on the night of the event.
Tidal Waters
After a long absence, Vel has come home to Choco - to the Afro-Colombian community, to her family, to the sea. This is where the Pacific meets the Caribbean, where she's establishing herself anew. She keeps a record of letters sent to a friend, clarifying for herself where she stands, describing her homecoming to another.
Vel works to build a literary centre, writing career, and festival with and for the people there. But her return to Choco is also a claim-staking of her decision to pursue happiness now; an account of her immersion in the towns and rivers and forests she came from; and a redefinition of her relationship to sex and love.
Tidal Waters is a vision of how creating something (for your community, for yourself) is a way of reading and writing your way into a known place and a new self.
About Velia Vidal
Velia Vidal (Bahia Solano, Colombia, 1982) is a writer who loves the sea and shared readings. For her book Tidal Waters she won the Afro-Colombian Authors Publication Grant awarded by Colombia's Ministry of Culture. She is the co-author of Oir somos rio (2019) and its bilingual German-Spanish edition. She is the founder and director of the Motete Educational and Cultural Corporation and the Choco Reading and Writing Festival (FLECHO). Vidal graduated in Afro-Latin American Studies and has a Masters in Reading Education and Children's Literature. She is also a journalist and specialist in social management and communication. In 2022 she was chosen by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential women in the world.