Juan Villoro’s conference

A conference entitled “The ball and mind: football as a cultural phenomenon”, given by the Mexican writer Juan Villoro took place on Tuesday, 26 October, at 19:00 hours in the Public Library (Biblioteca Foral).

Organized by the Athletic Club Fundazioa Foundation, the conference drew the event “Football and the Written Word”, that throughout this month gave us the opportunity to unite writers and footballers around a table concerning the relationship between their respective duties, to a close.

Juan Villoro (Mexico DF, 1956) is one of the most important Hispano-American writers today. His works cover, novels, short stories, essays, travelling diaries, chronicles, press articles and children’s books. He has published such novels as “Materia dispuesta” (Spanish edition), “El disparo de Argón” (The Shot of Argon) or the fabulous “El testigo” (The Witness), the latter having won the Herralde Prize in 2004. Among his short stories, the following stand out “La casa pierde” (House loses) or “Los culpables” (The Guilty Ones), and among some of his children’s books the following “El profesor Zíper y la fabulosa guitarra eléctrica” (Professor Ziper and the fabulous electric guitar) or “El libro salvaje” (The Wild Book). He is currently a literature professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and an invited speaker at Yale, Boston and Pompeu i Fabra de Barcelona Universities. He customarily collaborates with newspapers like La Jornada (Mexico), El País and El Periódico and in publications such as Letras Libres, Proceso, Nexos and Reforma, which are usually on football related issues. Some of his best football articles were collected in the volume “Dios es redondo” (God is round), published by Anagrama in 2006.