Toledo.- For the fourth consecutive year, the Coordination Unit against Violence against Women of the Delegation of the Government of Spain in Castilla-La Mancha, within the training and awareness-raising activities financed from the Funds of the State Pact against Gender Violence, organizes the cycle of conferences "A cultural approach to violence against women".
Within this program organized within the framework of the International Day for the Elimination of Gender Violence, tomorrow, Wednesday, November 20, will take place the talk-colloquium “Take off your hat in the face of inconvenient women” by the writer Elvira Lindo.
In 2018, Elvira Lindo published “30 ways to take off your hat” (2018, Seix Barral), a book of essays in which she analyzes the work, life and times of 29 essential women in the Spanish cultural scene, women who were able to express their creativity regardless of the male canon of their time.
Writers, painters, photographers and creators of the most diverse disciplines who, with a strong personality, were able to transfer their vision of the world to the cultural panorama of their time, following the example of disobedience and provocation of Maruja Mallo, Margarita Manso and Concha Méndez, the Sinsombrero, who in the 1920s dared to go against the established, taking off their hat in the Madrid Puerta del Sol.
Now, in a colloquial talk far from the formalism of the conferences, Elvira Lindo reviews the brilliant, and often forgotten, trajectory of these women who opened up paths, developing their creative activity above the impositions exercised by a predominantly male intellectual community.
Brief biographical notes
Elvira Lindo Garrido (Cádiz, 1962) is a renowned writer and journalist. Multifaceted, beyond being the creator of the unforgettable Manolito Gafotas, her activity has addressed journalism, the novel, television and cinematographic script and even the interpretation as an occasional actress.
Her first children’s novel was built around one of her radio characters, which she herself played on the radio, the Madrid boy Manolito Gafotas, a character that since 1994 has become a classic in Spanish children’s literature, starring in a series of first-person novels written with solid literary style, humor, irony and acute social criticism that made her worthy of the National Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature in 1998.
The author has written novels for adults: The Other Neighborhood (1998), Something More Unexpected Than Death (2002), A Word From You (2005). With which he won the XIX Short Library Award), What I Still Have to Live (2010). He has also written theater and scripts for the films The First Night of My Life, Manolito Gafotas, Verbal Attack, Plenilunio, and The Unexpected Life.
In 2019 she premiered El niño y la bestia, which she herself defined as a musical tale.
In addition to children’s and adults’ narrative, she has written non-fiction, among whose works stands out her collaboration in Ser Mujer, by Laura Freixas, under the title of Ser Compañera and above all 30 ways to take off your hat (2018, Seix Barral).
A prominent columnist, in the year 2000 she began collaborating in the newspaper El País with her summer column entitled Tintos de verano, chronicles that have later been published in the form of books (Tinto de verano, El mundo es un pañuelo and Another summer with you). This column was followed by the Sunday column Don de gente, which began to be published in 2001.
In November 2011 he published Places I Don’t Want to Share With Anyone (ed. Seix Barral), a book in which he relates his reflections and experiences in New York.
Awards
National Children’s and Youth Literature Award for Manolito Gafotas’ Dirty Rags. 1998
Film Writers’ Circle Medal for Best Original Screenplay for The First Night of My Life in 1998
Cervantes Chico Award in 1999.
XIX Short Library Award for A Word of Yours (2005)
BBK Ja Award! Bilbao 2019, within the International Festival of Literature and Art with Humor Ja! Bilbao, for the very fine sense of humor that permeates all his work.
LIBER 2023 Award to the most outstanding Spanish-American author.