Chloe Aridjis awarded the Second Recipient of the ‘Writing the Prado’ Residency Programme

The programme invites internationally renowned writers to engage with the Museum’s collections and rich history as a source of inspiration for literary creation. Works by each of the participating authors will be published jointly by the Museum and prestigious literary magazine Granta.

Author Chloe Aridjis, winner of the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, follows the first recipient of the ‘Writing the Pardo’ residency, JM Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature. Established by The Prado Museum and the LOEWE FOUNDATION in collaboration with Granta magazine, the project hosts renowned writers and invites them to use the Museum's collections as inspiration for literary creation. Aridjis will spend nine weeks in Madrid from early October engaging with the Museum, its art works, private and public collections, artists, galleries and buildings. Aridjis will also participate in a series of public talks during the residency.

Mexican-American writer Chloe Aridjis, who has dual interest in the worlds of literature and art, writes for various specialised journals and is the author of three novels: Book of Clouds, which won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger in France; Asunder, set in London’s National Gallery; and Sea Monsters, winner of the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2014, she was appointed guest curator for a Leonora Carrington exhibition at Tate Liverpool and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2020, she won the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award.