Join Spike Island and East Bristol Books for an informal reading group on Pedro Carmona-Alvarez’s novel, Chiquitita.
Marisol’s country is collapsing. A military coup sends the five-year-old and her family fleeing into the night. They seek shelter in a refugee camp where her parents try to protect her from danger while they await asylum abroad.
Marisol spends her adult life trying to forget her childhood, the aunts and uncles she left behind and the friends whose names she no longer recalls. But when her partner starts to ask about her past, she finds herself confronting the memories that haunt her.
Chiquitita is a tender novel about flight and exile, the passing of time and the experiences that remain with us, refusing erasure.
East Bristol Books co-founders Dan Eltringham and Andrés Anwandter will facilitate an informal conversation around the book and the topics addressed by Carmona-Alvarez.
This reading group is part of the Summer 2026 Spike Island Associates programme, The Texture of Dreams, drawing on the themes that underpin the exhibitions by Tohé Commaret and Nancy Lupo, currently on view in Spike Island’s galleries.
Preparation:
Please purchase a copy of the book and read it in advance of the event.
You can purchase the book with a 10% discount from East Bristol Books – either purchase it from their shop in Old Market (just mention that you’re attending the reading group to get the discount) or buy it from their website with the promo code EBBSpike002.
East Bristol Books is a small independent bookshop on Old Market, the historic eastern gateway to Bristol’s city centre. Radical, diverse, independent-minded, and community-orientated, EBB reflects the nature and values of East Bristol.
EBB specialise in independent, small-press and DIY publishing and culture, with particular emphasis on poetry, fiction in translation, and politics. EBB is also home to a shifting array of print ephemera: chapbooks, pamphlets, mags and zines. As well as literature, we love music, art, exploratory non–fiction, critical writing, the weird, the folky, the rooted (in the right way), and place, landscape, and our nonhuman neighbours.
Instagram @ebb_bristol
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