IMAGINE BREAKING EVERYTHING online book launch event

It’s a rainy weekend in Bogotá, and eighteen-year-old Melissa is about to graduate from school. If, that is, she can scrape together the money to pay for the printer she broke. Melissa used to break a lot of things, but after five years of living with her aunt Anahí, she has become much better at controlling her anger. Then, out of the blue and for the first time in six months, Melissa’s mother calls her and invites her to spend the weekend together in their old neighbourhood. Melissa is excited to spend time with her, but nervous about returning to the scene of her troubled early adolescence. Will she make it to Monday morning without jeopardising her future – or being swallowed up by her past?

‘What makes [Imagine Breaking Everything] an unforgettable read is the combination of who Melissa is as a character and her voice. Not only is she the rare female protagonist who externalizes her rage, literally punching first so she won’t become the punching bag, but as a first-person narrator she is brutally honest, funny, self-aware, and able to create moments of utter heartbreak and insight while staying true to the rawness of Bogotá slang.’ - Diana Andrade Melgarejo, Latin American Literature Today

Lina Munar Guevara (b. 1996) is a writer and lawyer from Bogotá, Colombia. Imagine Breaking Everything was published by Himpar Editores in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Sundial Literary Translation Award (2023). Her story ‘In the Mountains’ is published in English (translated by Ellen Jones) in a collection of Latin American horror stories titled Through the Night Like a Snake, part of Two Lines Press’s Calico Series (2024). Lina has an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University.

Ellen Jones is a writer, editor, and literary translator from Spanish. Her recent and forthcoming translations include Restoration by Ave Barrera (co-translated with Robin Myers), Cubanthropy by Iván de la Nuez, The Remains by Margo Glantz (shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2023) and Nancy by Bruno Lloret. Her monograph, Literature in Motion: Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas is published by Columbia University Press (2022). Her short fiction has appeared in Litro Magazine, Slug and The London Magazine.

Event supported by Arts Council England.