Cuba’s bestselling science fiction author Yoss is also its most notorious literary rocker: He’s the lead singer and harmonicist for the Havana death metal band Tenaz. Join ISSUE, BOMB Magazine and Restless Books for an evening of Cuban sci-fi and rock and roll at for this very special Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends event.
Co-hosted by Restless Books, BOMB Magazine, and ISSUE Project Room, the event begins with a discussion of the Cuban literary and metal scenes, and the role that science fiction plays in the culture. Then, Yoss takes the stage to perform some his favorite metal classics. Books, merch, and BOMB issues will be for sale, and discounted drinks will be available at the bar. Entry includes a copy of Yoss’ intergalactic space opera Super Extra Grande and a drink ticket.
Doors open at 7:30pm
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2016 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL EVENT.
Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science fiction category for Timshel. Together with his peculiar pseudonym, the author's aesthetic of an impentinent rocker has allowed him to stand out amongst his fellow Cuban writers. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on Narrative Techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, reviews, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto.
About Super Extra Grande:
With the playfulness and ingenuity of Douglas Adams, the Cuban science-fiction master Yoss delivers a space opera of intergalactic proportions with Super Extra Grande, the winner of the twentieth annual UPC Science Fiction Award in 2011. In a distant future in which Latin Americans have pioneered faster-than-light space travel, Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo has a job with large and unusual responsibilities: he’s a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous alien animals. Mountain-sized amoebas, multisex species with bizarre reproductive processes, razor-nailed, carnivorous humanoid hunters: Dr. Sangan has seen it all. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the galaxy’s seven intelligent species, he must embark on a daring mission through the insides of a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors—who also happen to be his competing love interests. Funny, witty, raunchy, and irrepressibly vivacious, Super Extra Grande is a rare specimen in the richly parodic tradition of Cuban science fiction, and could only have been written by a Cuban heavy-metal rock star with a biology degree: the inimitable Yoss.
