Fri, Jul 10
|Backstory English Bookshop
Backstory Talks: Malén Denis
Argentine author Malén Davis will speak to writer Rachel Ballenger about her newly translated debut novel.
Time & Location
Jul 10, 2026, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Backstory English Bookshop, C/ de Mallorca, 330, L'Eixample, 08037 Barcelona, Spain
About the event
Argentine writer and multidisciplinary artist Malén Denis will join Backstory Bookshop to discuss her recently translated debut novel, Lithium (New Directions Publishing). The book was first published in Spanish in 2020 by Caballo de Troya/Penguin Random House in Spain and translated to English by Laura Hatry and John Wronoski. Malén's work explores the political role of intimacy, the relationship between spirituality and late capitalism and the possibilities of first-person narratives. She studied Philosophy, Photography and Audiovisual Production, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the National University of Tres de Febrero.
Her novel Lithium is about what cannot be fully named or pinned down. “Language,” the author notes, acts “in this book as a pharmakon—both poison and remedy—inviting the reader to navigate its ambivalence. I wrote it by following the golden thread of poetry and the echoes of psychoanalysis, letting the images lead rather than the plot.”…