Each year, Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature invites international writers for a residency in the city, while writers from Fryslân take part in residencies in other cities. In November 2025, Patrícia Soley-Beltran from Barcelona UNESCO City of Literature will live and work in Leeuwarden.
Patrícia Soley-Beltran is an Independent Scholar, researcher, essayist and translator born in Barcelona. She holds a PhD in Sociology of Gender (University of Edinburgh, 2001) and a Master of Arts in Cultural History (Hons.) (University of Aberdeen, 1995). She has published extensively on gender theory in scientific journals; she is the author of Transexualidad y la matriz heterosexual. A critical study by Judith Butler (Bellaterra, Barcelona, 2009) and the main editor of Judith Butler in dispute. Readings from performativity (together with Leticia Sabsay, Egales, Barcelona, 2012). Her scientific work was funded by the Students Awards Agency for Scotland, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, European Council, Generalitat de Cataluña, Francesca Bonnemaison Scholarship, The European Science and Technology Network.
As a science populariser, she was awarded with the 43rd Anagrama Essay Prize for her book ¡Divinas! Modelos, poder y mentiras (Anagrama 2015) and with the I María Luz Morales Prize for Journalism with a gender perspective (El País, 2016). As a writer, she won the first prize in 420 Characters for Equality Relations (Catalan Institute for Women, 2012) and the XXI Puig de Missa Poetry Prize (Ibiza, 2017). She has several short stories published in El País, Yo Dona and Editorial Siruela. Her literary work has been supported by a Montserrat Roig scholarship from Barcelona and Leeuwarden, both UNESCO City of Literature.
She is currently writing An Unbearable Paradise, a novel based on the true story of Vera Broïdo, nude model and daughter of a prominent Russian Menshevik revolutionary Eva Gordon. During 1933-1934 Vera lived amongst the foreign community in the island of Ibiza, which featured interesting figures such as dadaist Raoul Hausmann (Vera’s lover), philosopher Walter Benjamin or writer Albert Camus, amongst many others. These were crucial years for the history of Spain and Europe, and for this young Russian woman whose wings grew in the Mediterranean.
