Estuary Waters

An epistolary, fictional account of one woman moving towards happiness in the black community of Colombia’s Pacific coast.

After a long absence, Vel has come home to Chocó - to the Afro-Colombian community, to her family, to the sea. This is where the Pacific meets the Caribbean, where she’s establishing herself anew. And the record she keeps is a series of letters to a friend, clarifying for herself where she stands, as she describes that homecoming to another. Vel works to build a literary centre, writing career, and festival with and for the people there. But her return to Chocó is also a claim-staking of her decision to pursue happiness now; an account of her immersion in the towns and rivers and forests she came from; and a redefinition of her relationship to sex and love in real time. And Tidal Waters is a vision of how creating something (for your community, for yourself) is a way of reading and writing your way into a known place and a new self.

Velia Vidal (Bahía Solano, Colombia, 1982) is a writer who loves the sea and shared readings. In 2021 she was a fellow at Villa Josepha Ahrenshoop, in Germany. For her book Aguas de estuario (Laguna Libros, 2020) she won the Afro-Colombian Authors Publication Grant awarded by Colombia’s Ministry of Culture. She is the co-author of Oír somos río (2019) and its bilingual German-Spanish edition (Grindwal Kollektiv, 2021). She is the founder and director of the Motete Educational and Cultural Corporation and the Chocó Reading and Writing Festival (FLECHO). Vidal graduated in Afro-Latin American Studies and has a Masters in Reading Education and Children’s Literature. She is also a journalist and specialist in social management and communication.

Annie McDermott ’s translations include Mario Levrero’s Empty Words and The Luminous Novel (And Other Stories and Coffee House Press), Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff, Charco Press) and City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersão (co-translation with Jethro Soutar, Dalkey Archive Press). Her translations, reviews and essays have appeared in Granta, The White Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote, the Times Literary Supplement and LitHub, among others. She has translated several books by Selva Almada, including: Dead Girls (2020) and Brickmakers (2021). In 2023, she was awarded the Valle Inclán Prize for her translation of Joseph Zárate’s Wars of the Interior.