30/03/2009
Vitoria-Gasteiz, March 30, 2009 - The Encounters with the
Cathedral conference series organised by Fundación Catedral Santa María
will be holding this season’s last conference, which features
Vitoria-native and writer Toti Martínez de Lezea. The session will be
entitled Errata in historical films and start at 8:00 p.m. at Palacio
de Villa Suso; admission is free of charge.
After several months of featuring the eminent specialists in the
historical novel, such as Margarita Torres, Antonio Penadés, Jesús
Sánchez Adalid, José Luis Urrutia, José Calvo Poyato and Ángeles
Irisarri, who have passed through Vitoria, the curtain will be coming
down on the Encounters with the Cathedral series with the presence of a
prolific narrator whose work has been wildly successful in sales as
well as number of readers.
For twenty years, Toti Martínez de
Lezea has been combining her work as a professional translator with
jobs in the theatre and television, where she has written and directed
over one thousand children’s programmes; she also founded the
Kukubiltxo theatre troupe. A writer with English and French language
credentials, she was launched on a brilliant career in 1998, with the
publication of her first novel, La calle de la Judería, which narrates
the life of a family of Jews converted to Christianity in
fifteenth-century Vitoria.
After that, and at the pace of one book per year, she put out Las
torres de Sancho (1999), set in the eleventh-century reign of Sancho
III the Great in Navarre, La Herbolera (2000), based on documents from
the Durango witch hunt in 1500, Señor de la guerra (2001), set in the
war between bands in Euskal Herria and the burning of
Arrasate-Mondragón in 1448, and La abadesa (2002), which narrates the
life of an illegitimate daughter of King Ferdinand the Catholic and a
woman from Bilbao.
That same year, Euskal Leiendak was re-published in a new format with
new illustrations and her first children’s novel, El mensajero del rey,
came out. She also published Los hijos de Ogaiz, a novel set in
fourteenth-century in Estella during the Black Death. In recent years,
her career has been crowned with the publication of other best-selling
novels, such as La voz de Lug, La hija de la luna, Antxo III Nagusia,
El verdugo de Dios, El jardín de la Oca, La Flor de Argoma, Placeres
Reales, Reyes, Reinas, Sexo y Cocina and A la sombra del templo, a
story that recreates the ambiance in Vitoria when Cardinal Adriano de
Utrecht was elected Pope while in the city and features Santa Maria
Cathedral, then Santa Maria Collegiate Church, in a stellar role.
Her
successful literary career has garnered her a number of awards, such as
the Euskadi de Plata Award for best-selling book of the 2000 San
Sebastian Book Fair and the Pluma de Plata for best-selling author of
the 2001 Bilbao Book Fair. Likewise, she is a frequent contributor to
the media and speaks at colloquies and conferences in libraries and
cultural associations.
Toti Martínez de Lezea’s conference Errata in historical films will
begin at 8:00 p.m. at Palacio de Villa Suso. Admission will be free
until seating capacity has been reached, although members of Santa
Maria Cathedral’s Founders Circle will have priority admission until
7:45 p.m..