The Mouth of the Earth

Manuel Rivas was born in Coruña, Galicia, in 1957. He graduated in Media Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid and then worked as a journalist in the press, radio and television. As an author, he is best known for his seven novels and six collections of short stories. Several volumes have been published in English: The Carpenter's Pencil (2001, novel), In the Wilderness (2003, novel), Books Burn Badly (2010, novel), Vermeer's Milkmaid (2002, stories), Butterfly's Tongue (2000, stories). He is also a highly-regarded poet and essayist. All of his literary work is written in Galician. An edition of Rivas' poetry in Jonathan Dunne's English translation, From Unknown to Unknown (2009), brought together eighty of his poems, drawn from the collected edition published in Galician as Do descoñecido ao descoñecido in 2003, and Shearsman Books published Lorna Shaughnessy's translation of his The Disappearance of Snow in 2012. Some of his work has been filmed in Spain: La lengua de las mariposas (Butterfly's Tongue), based on 3 interwoven stories contained in his collection Que me queres, amor? (Vermeer's Milkmaid in the English language edition), directed by José Luis Cuerda, and El lápiz del carpintero (The Carpenter's Pencil), directed by Antón Reixa.