Marina Perezagua will receive next Tuesday the III Ciudad de Estepona Novel Prize for her work ‘La playa’ (The Beach).

The award ceremony will take place in the Auditorium of the Mirador del Carmen Cultural Center in an event open to the public, where the renowned guitarist Daniel Casares will perform.

The Estepona City Council informs that the writer Marina Perezagua will receive next Tuesday, April 30, the III City of Estepona Novel Award for her work ‘La playa’. The award ceremony will take place in the Auditorium of the Mirador del Carmen Center at 19:00 hours, in an event open to the public that will be attended by the mayor, José María García Urbano; the president of the Manuel Alcántara Foundation, Antonio Pedraza; Manuel Borrás, literary editor of Pre-Textos; Guillermo Busutil, writer and director of the award; and Manuel Vilas, writer and jury of the award.

The City of Estepona Novel Prize, a joint initiative of the Estepona City Council and the Manuel Alcántara Foundation, has the fundamental objective of promoting and recognizing excellence in literary creation, consolidating itself as one of the most outstanding prizes at national level in this field. The award has a prize of 25,000 euros for the winning work, which has been published by Editorial Pre-Textos.

After the award ceremony, there will be a meeting-colloquium with the participation of Marina Perezagua, Guillermo Busutil and Manuel Vilas. Afterwards, the renowned guitarist from Estepona, Daniel Casares, will perform. The interpreter and composer, situated in the elite of the flamenco guitar, has an extensive musical career and has been awarded with numerous prizes and recognitions. In addition, he has shared studio and stage with renowned international artists such as Loreena McKennitt, Toquinho, Dulce Pontes, Chucho Valdés, Cecilia Bartoli and Alejandro Sanz.

The event will conclude with the signing of copies by the award winner Marina Perezagua, followed by a toast with a glass of wine to celebrate the closing of the third edition of the award.

The Jury

A jury made up of renowned members of the Spanish literary and journalistic community evaluated the nearly 700 works submitted last September. Among them were Spanish poet and writer Manuel Vilas, finalist for the Planeta Prize in 2019 and winner of the Nadal Prize in 2023; writer, translator and journalist Ángeles Caso; Hispanic philologist and journalist David Felipe Arranz, who is also a professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid and collaborates with several media outlets; writer and journalist Eva Díaz Pérez; Silvia Pratdesaba, editor of Editorial Pre-Textos; and writer and journalist Guillermo Busutil, winner of the National Cultural Journalism Prize in 2021.

The jury defined ‘La playa’ as “a thought-provoking novel that both illuminates and shadows the complexity of motherhood, and the bonds between mothers and daughters. In a three-voice conversation, the story explores fears, absences, guilt, death, and turns hospitals and medical terminology into literary territory”.

Marina Perezagua

Marina Perezagua has a degree in Art History from the University of Seville. She taught Hispanic American language, literature, history and film at the State University of New York, where she earned her PhD in Hispanic Philology. After living for a long period in France and working at the Instituto Cervantes in Lyon, she returned to New York, where she taught creative writing at New York University as Distinguished Writer in Residence.

She is the author of the short story collections ‘Abyssal Creatures’ and ‘Milk’. She has published three novels: ‘Yoro’, ‘Don Quijote de Manhattan’ and ‘Seis formas de morir en Texas’ (Anagrama), a book of poetry: ‘Nana de la Medusa’ (Espasa) and ‘A -122 metros’ (Planeta), a technical book, but of hybrid genre about the runner-up of the world freediving championship and the benefits of this sport, co-authored with Miguel Lozano.

She has been published in several anthologies and literary magazines, such as Renacimiento, Carátula, Sibila, Ñ, Quimera, Granta, Letras Libres, Jot Down, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Anfibia. She has been translated into nine languages and her novel ‘Yoro’ was awarded the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize 2016. She is a contributor to El País.