Brenda Navarro in Conversation

Blackwell’s Manchester welcomes acclaimed Mexican writer Brenda Navarro to the UK for a conversation around her newly translated novel Eating Ashes. Presented in partnership with Instituto Cervantes Manchester, the event brings Navarro together with Professor H. Rosi Song of Durham University for an in-depth discussion of the book and its themes.

Eating Ashes opens with a moment of devastating loss and follows a narrator grappling with the suicide of her younger brother. Through fragmented memories of Mexico and Spain, the novel explores grief, displacement, belonging and the complex idea of home. Tender and deeply moving, it is also threaded with moments of dark humour, marking it as a powerful work from a vital Latin American voice.

Navarro’s writing is informed by her background in sociology, gender studies and feminist economics, as well as her work promoting women’s writing through the #EnjambreLiterario collective. Her debut novel Empty Houses received widespread praise for its incisive engagement with contemporary social issues, and Eating Ashes continues this bold, compassionate literary vision.

The event offers audiences the chance to hear directly from the author, engage in discussion, and reflect on literature that confronts loss, migration and identity with honesty and hope.