Image: Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires’ Museum of Latin American Art, Malba, has named Beñat Sarasola as the 24th participant in its Writer Residency program, with the author staying in the city during July and August as part of a five-week working period. Sarasola, born in San Sebastián in 1984, is the first writer in the program to work in Euskera, the Basque language, and his residency is supported by the Etxepare Euskal Institutua.
The residency is organized by Malba’s Literature department and has operated since 2018, with institutional support from Ampersand. According to the museum, the program brings selected writers to Buenos Aires to work on their own projects while also taking part in public programming and exchanges with local literary circles. For 2026, Malba says the residency will host five writers from different countries over the course of the year.
Sarasola’s stay in Buenos Aires centers on his next novella, 'Zaharberritzea' ('Restoration'), which he will develop during the residency. Malba describes the work as a novella in progress, and the museum’s materials note that it engages with the ambiguity of seduction and the transformation of desire into other kinds of human relationship. The site also presents the project as one that dialogues with contemporary narrative traditions and with a museological conception of space as an active environment for creation.
Public events will accompany the residency. The first is an interview titled 'Beñat Sarasola en Residencia', scheduled for Wednesday, August 5, at 7 p.m. in the Malba Library. The event is listed as free with prior registration and will feature Sarasola in conversation with Magdalena Arrupe of Malba Literatura and Sebastián Amaya of the Escuela de Humanidades at UNSAM. Malba says there will be book sales and a toast at the event.
Further appearances are planned beyond the museum. On Saturday, August 8, Sarasola will join a poetry reading called 'Terraza FED' at C Complejo Art Media as part of the Feria de Editores, or FED 2026. The lineup also includes Alejandro Crotto, María Malusardi, Tomás Fadel and Milagros Pérez Morales, with Lucía Igoly and Pierre Froideveaux as moderators. Another public conversation, 'Charlas de biblioteca', is set for Friday, August 14, at the Biblioteca del Centro Laurak Bat in Buenos Aires.
The residency will conclude with a reading at Ampersand, on Thursday, August 27, where Sarasola is due to read an unpublished text written during his stay. Malba’s materials identify Ampersand as an institutional partner of the residency since 2018 and place the reading within the broader REM schedule of activities developed around resident writers and their work in Buenos Aires.
