Book Launch – Luis Othoniel Rosa – El Gato En El Remolino/Animal Spiral
Join us for a book launch you don’t want to miss! On September 18th author Luis Othoniel Rosa will be presenting his book El Gato En El Remolino, and the English language version, translated by Katie Marya, Animal Spiral.
To order the Spanish language version, El Gato En El Remolino, follow the link HERE!
To order the English language version, Animal Spiral, follow the link HERE!
About the Book:
The post-colonial birth, life, and death of the collective consciousness known as the Animal.
Middle-aged streamer twins in Bayam n, Puerto Rico, are the first human beings to successfully connect–sharing their consciousness across 34 translucent cables. In that moment, the Animal is born, an intracerebral force that quickly grows to encompass anthills of synaptically entwined bodies, a floating library kitchen redolent of rice and beans far above the Mississippi river, and a transhuman compound in a future Cuba on the Isle of Youth.
Circling back and forth and ever progressing, Animal Spiral moves through 400 years of human, and then post-human history, beginning with a revolution on the streets of San Juan and ending with five brilliant siblings: the Squash (humanoid), Calima (beetles), Yemay (eels), Coatlicue (serpents), and Jurac n (anthropomorphic birds), who have millions of bodies and all the world’s intelligence, but only want to no longer be alone. This is a buoyant, joyous ode to possibility, a warning about the dangers of neglecting what makes us human, and an astonishing exercise of the flexibility and capacity of liminal spaces. Loneliness is a collective disease We defend our right to madness Brave are not the ones who resist; brave are the ones who let go.
About the Author:
Luis Othoniel Rosa is a Puerto Rican writer from Bayamón. He studied at the University of Puerto Rico and holds a PhD from Princeton University, and his work engages with questions of literature, politics and form.Katie Marya is the author of Sugar Work, the Editor’s Choice for the 2020 Alice James Book Award, and the translator of Luis Othoniel Rosa’s novel Animal Spiral (2026). She has been awarded the James Dickey Prize in Poetry from Five Points and support from the Nebraska Arts Council and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Murray State University.
About the Translator:
Katie Marya is the author of Sugar Work, the Editor’s Choice for 2020 Alice James Book Award. Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and translations have appeared in literary magazines such as AGNI, North American Review, Waxwing, Salamander, Fence, and on the national poetry podcast The Slowdown Show. She lives in Nebraska and teaches writing a the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.