Conversations from the Cullman Center: Jordi Puntí and Colm Tóibín

On April 23, Saint Jordi’s Day, Catalonians offer books and flowers to loved ones in honor of Barcelona’s patron saint. In a New York version of this tradition, Jordi Puntí and Colm Tóibín pay tribute to the great Catalan writer Josep Pla, whose books include The Gray Notebook and Life Embitters. Puntì and Tóibín will discuss Pla’s life, work, and enduring influence on Catalan and Spanish literature.

This event is co-presented with New York Review Books, Archipelago Books, and the Institut Ramon Llull.

Jordi Puntí  -author, translator, and regular contributor to the Catalan and Spanish press - lives in Barcelona.   His first novel, Lost Luggage, was translated into sixteen languages and won the Spanish National Critics’ Award, the Catalan Booksellers Prize, and the Lletra d’Or. Punti has also published two collections of short stories and a memoir about his childhood in an industrial town in Spain in the 1970s.  He is currently a fellow at Cullman Center, working on a novel inspired by the life of the musician Xavier Cugat. 

The Irish writer Colm Tóibín has published more than twenty books, including the novels The South, The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary (short-listed for the Man Booker Prize), and most recently, Nora Webster, named a New York Times Notable Book of 2014.  His non-fiction books include Homage to Barcelona, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, and New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and their Families. Tóibín’s many literary awards and honors include the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2009 and the Irish PEN Award in 2011.  Tóibín writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and is a professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He was a fellow at the Cullman Center in 2000-2001.