In 2010, 2,499 books were published in the Basque Autonomous Comunity -a part of the Basque Country. This region formed by Biscay, Araba and Gipuzkoa has 2,124,846 inhabitants. Nearly 50% of that population is able to understand Basque, but not all of them are current Basque culture consumers. Lets say that, including the rest of Basque speakers who do not live in the Basque Autonomous Community, the social group that habitually consumes Basque literature will not be, unfortunately, more than 800,000 readers.
870 books (out of the 2,499) were published in Basque. This means that a book was written for every 919 readers. This percentage is a clear evidence of the importance that nowadays Basque literature has for the Basque culture. And a significant part of those books were written by a new wave of female authors.
Dr. Katixa Agirre is a well-known Basque writer that could be considered as part of that new wave. She will visit the University of Birmingham the 23rd of November to take part in the next Hispanic Research Seminar to give a lecture entitled "The Girls Are Coming. Gender, Youth and the New Basque Literature".
"This seminar will explore one of the most relevant phenomena in contemporary Basque literature: the advent, over the last decade, of a significant number of female authors to a male-dominated literary environment. Young female writers’ bittersweet encounter with readers, critics, and the media will be discussed."
Dr. Katixa Agirre published her first book in 2007, Sua Falta Zaigu (Elkar), and the same year she published her first children's book Paularen Seigarren Atzamarra (Elkar). In 2007 she was awarded the Igartza grant to write the book Habitat, which was published in 2009.
The seminar will take place in the Strathcona building, Lecture Theatre 6, at 3.00pm. Refreshments will be available after the seminar.
