Edurne Portela


Miren Edurne Portela Camino is a Spanish historian, philologist, university professor, essayist, and novelist.
WWW edurneportela.com𝕏 edurne_portela

Biography

Edurne Portela was born in Santurtzi in 1974. She earned a licentiate in history from the University of Navarra in 1997. She furthered her studies in the United States, where she also developed her professional career as a teacher and researcher. She completed a master's degree in Hispanic literature in 1999, and a doctorate in Spanish and Latin American literature in 2003, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, becoming an associate professor there from 1999 to 2001. In 2003, she moved to the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where she taught as an associate professor from 2003 to 2008, directed the Humanities Center from 2008 to 2014, and directed the college's International Initiatives from 2013 to 2014.
In 2010, she co-founded the International Association of Spanish Literature and Cinema of the 21st Century, serving as its vice president from 2010 to 2016 and a member of the editorial board of ALCES XXI Magazine.
In 2016, Portela finished her academic career in the United States and returned to Spain in order to dedicate herself completely to writing, through the publication of essays and novels, as well as pieces for print and digital media outlets such as , El Correo, El País, RNE, and Cadena SER.
In 2018, she received the Best Fiction Book award for her novel Mejor la ausencia from the Madrid Bookstores Guild.
Her novel El eco de los disparos: cultura y memoria de la violencia received the for Literature in Spanish in 2022.
Both in her work as a novelist and in her essays, Edurne Portela addresses and investigates the theme of violence in different aspects, from that experienced in Basque society during the rise of ETA to the everyday violence of toxic relationships.

Awards and recognition

  • 2018 – Best Fiction Book, awarded by the Madrid Bookstores Guild in its 18th edition, for Mejor la ausencia
  • 2022 – in the Literature in Spanish category, for ''Los ojos cerrados''

Works

Essays

Displaced Memories: The Poetics of Trauma in Argentine Women Writers. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 2009..El eco de los disparos: cultura y memoria de la violencia. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg SL, 2016..

Novels

Mejor la ausencia. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg SL, 2017..Formas de estar lejos. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg SL, 2019..

Scientific articles

  • in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2007, vol. 41, pp. 51–71.
  • in Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 2007, vol. 11, pp. 121–136.
  • in Revista Iberoamericana, January–March 2008, vol. 74, n. 222, pp. 71–84.
  • in A Contracorriente. Una Revista de Historia Social y Literatura de América Latina, Spring 2010, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 168–184.
  • in Anales de Literatura Española Contemporánea, 2011, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 187–207.
  • "Despertar del letargo: Literatura vasca contra la indiferencia y el silencio" in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2013, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 417–442.