Love beyond clichés, up for debate at the MOT festival
The literary event will be held between March 17 and 29 in Girona and Olot
Maria-Mercè Marçal's verse "another name for love, please" inspires the motto and activities of the new edition of the MOT literary festival, dedicated this time to love in all its forms, beyond inherited clichés and in a "present full of possibilities to love each other". "Who dares not to call new forms of sexual-affective relationships such as polyamory love?" asks the writer, philosopher and specialist in gender studies Montse Barderi, curator of this edition of the MOT, which has the motto "More names for love". "We would like everyone to feel challenged in this edition of the festival. Everyone has or has had love experiences, or lack of love experiences, and that is why this festival speaks to everyone," says Barderi.
The MOT edition will be held between March 17 and 19, with activities spread across the cities of Girona and Olot, and with the participation of great names in contemporary Catalan and international literature. "It is a literary festival of the highest level," say the Councillors for Culture of Girona and Olot, Quim Ayats and Josep Quintana, and also the commissioner Montse Barderi, who claims the need for literature and culture as tools of "resistance" of "people of peace" against Trump and the new world leaders who foment wars, and foment wars.
The theme of love will be addressed by the invited authors through fifteen conversations in which they will relate it to pain, subversion, passion, nobility or self-esteem, among other concepts. Among the authors who will participate are Maggie O'Farrell, who will open the festival on March 20 at the Carlos Rahola Library in Girona with an online presence, Tessa Hadley, Marta Orriols, Luis García Montero, Cynthia Rimsky, Gloria Gasch, Alba Dalmau, Polo Guasch, Luis Muntada, Jordi Nop.
Promoting a love for reading
The talks will be held in Girona from 20 to 22 March, and in Olot from 27 to 29 March. The festival will also be complemented by talks and presentations in the bookshops of the two cities hosting the event, and other literary activities and street events, with the aim of "fostering a taste for reading". To achieve this among the youngest, the festival is organising the Primer MOT and the MOT Escoles, which will allow 619 pupils from 15 primary schools in Girona to talk with an author whose work they have read. The MOT Ins is scheduled in the secondary schools of Girona and Olot, with dozens of activities such as workshops and talks.