M. G. Sanchez

M. G. Sanchez is a Gibraltarian writer who has written over a dozen books on Gibraltarian identity. His works have been reviewed in literary journals in Europe and the United Kingdom and he has lectured at many universities.

Background

Born in Gibraltar in 1968, Sanchez attended primary and secondary schools in the territory. Sanchez represented Gibraltar at international level in his youth, coming 139th in the 1985 IAAF World Cross Country Championships – Junior men's race. In 1995, Sanchez moved to the United Kingdom to study English Literature at the University of Leeds. He received a PhD in English Literature a doctoral thesis on subject of anti-Spanish sentiment in Elizabethan literary and political writing. Sanchez is a resident of the United Kingdom, but he also made long visits to New Zealand (2004), India (2005‒2008) and Japan (2014‒2016). In November 2020 he was awarded the Cultural Ambassador Award at the Gibraltar Government's annual culture awards.

Literary career

Writing in the ''New Statesman'' in early 2015, Sanchez stated that his intention as a writer and speaker was "to present a Gibraltar that feels more real and more tangible than the “contested territory” cliché that readers so often encounter in newspaper editorials." His book ''Past: A Memoir'' (2016) relates hardships his family endured during the 2013 Gibraltar border dispute between Spain and the United Kingdom. Sanchez also describes a walk he took in Gibraltar's Upper Town Area with the historian Nicholas Rankin.

Articles about Sanchez's work have appeared in ''British and American Studies'', ''Il Tolomeo'', ''Ariel'', ''ES Review,'' ''Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies,'' the ''Kervan International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies,'' the ''International Journal of Iberian Studies'', the ''Journal of Mediterranean Studies'', the '' Open Library of Humanities'', as well as in books such as ''Ritorno a Babele: esercizi di globalizzazione'' and ''(Post)Colonial Passages: Incursions and Excursion Across the Literatures and Cultures in English.''

Sanchez has lectured at the University of Salamanca, the University of Turin, the University of the Balearic Islands, the University of Portsmouth, the University of Strasbourg, the University of Barcelona, the University of Northumbria, the University of Granada, the University of Lisbon, the University of Gibraltar, the University of Malta, and King's College London. For an appearance at the University of Basel, Sanchez wrote an autobiographical piece entitled 'Fifty Years of Unbelonging.' He also participated in the 2017 Gibraltar International Literary Festival, delivering a talk entitled 'Representing Gibraltarianness,.' During the 2018 event, Sanchez discussed his book ''Bombay Journal.''

In December 2020 Sanchez was invited by the University of Barcelona to deliver the 21st annual Doireann MacDermott Lecture. His talk - 'Between the Colonial and the Postcolonial: Writing and the Creation of a Third-Space Identity' - was subsequently published in a special issue of ''Coolablah'', the official journal of the Australian and Transnational Studies Centre at the Universitat de Barcelona.

Sanchez has also taken part in radio programmes, including the Australian Broadcasting Company show ''Late Night Live'', the BBC World Service's ''The Cultural Frontline'' and ''Lletres Ebrenques'' with Emigdi Subirats i Sebastià.

Publications

* ''Rock of Empire'' (2001)
* ''Rock Black: Ten Gibraltarian Stories'' (2006)
* ''Writing the Rock of Gibraltar: An Anthology of Literary Texts, 1720-1890'' (2006)
* ''The Prostitutes of Serruya's Lane and other Hidden Histories'' (2007)
* ''Diary of a Victorian Colonial and other Tales'' (2008)
* ''Georgian and Victorian Gibraltar: Incredible Eyewitness Accounts'' (2012)
* ''The Escape Artist'' (2013)
* ''Solitude House'' (2015)
* ''Jonathan Gallardo'' (2015)
* ''Past: A Memoir'' (2016)
* ''Bombay Journal'' (2018)
* ''Crossed Lines'' (2019)
* ''Border Control and other Autobiographical Pieces'' (2019)
* ''Gooseman'' (2020)
* ''The Fetishist'' (2021)
* Marlboro Man (2022)

Critical bibliography

* Sarah M. Abas, 'M. G. Sanchez: an Interview,' ''ES Review'' 39, 2018, pp. 319-330.
* Esterino Adami, ‘La Rocca di Babele: narrazioni e trasformazioni linguistiche in M. G. Sanchez,' ''Ritorno a Babele: prove di globalizzazione'' (Turin: Neos Terrenia, 2013), pp. 71-81.
* Esterino Adami, ‘An Interview with Gibraltarian author M. G. Sanchez followed by a review of ''The Escape Artist'',' ''Il Tolomeo'' 13, 2013, pp. 29-36.
* Esterino Adami, ‘Recensione di ''Jonathan Gallardo'',’ ''Il Tolomeo'' 18, 2016, pp. 233-35.
* Esterino Adami, ‘Recensione di ''Solitude House'',’ ''Il Tolomeo'' 17, 2015, pp. 185-187.
* Esterino Adami, ‘A Passage to Gibraltar: Alterity and Representation in M. G. Sanchez,’ ''Postcolonial Passages: incursions and excursions across the literatures and cultures in English'' (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), pp. 204–214.
* Christine Berberich, 'Review of ''Gooseman'',' ''Wasafiri'' 111, 3, pp. 116-118.
* Isabel Alonso Breto, 'Review of ''Border Control and other Autobiographical Pieces'',' ''Complutense Journal of English Studies'' 28, 2020, pp. 229-231.
* Isabel Alonso Breto, 'An interview with Gibraltarian author Mark G. Sanchez, ''ariel: A Review of International English'' 52, 3-4, 2021, pp. 249-261.
* Miriam Fernández Santiago, 'Review of ''Gooseman''', ''Journal of Mediterranean Studies'' 31, 1, 2021, pp. 127-128.
* Rebecca Gabay, 'M. G. Sanchez’s ''Bombay Journal'': Redressing the Past from the Colonial Present,' ''Kervan International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies'' 22, 2018, pp. 291-294.
* Amanda Gerke, ‘Discursive Boundaries: Code-Switching as Representative of Gibraltarian Identity Construction in M. G. Sanchez's ''Rock Black,''’ ''Miscelánea'' 57, 2018 pp. 35-57.
* Ina Habermann, 'British-European Entanglements: M.G. Sanchez's The Escape Artist and the Case of Gibraltar,' ''Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings'' 2, 2018, pp. b1-20.
* Ina Habermann, 'Gibraltarian Hauntologies: Spectres of Colonialism in the Fiction of M. G. Sanchez', ''Open Library of Humanities'' 6, 1, 2020, p.19.
* Ina Habermann, 'Something rotten in the state of Gibraltar: M. G. Sanchez’s Autobiographical Explorations of borderlands', ''Mediterranean Studies'' 30, 2, 2022, pp. 163-176.
* Ana Maria Manzanas Calvo, 'The Line and the Limit of Britishness: The Construction of Gibraltarian Identity in M. G. Sanchez’s Writing,’ ''ES Review'' 38, 2017, pp. 27-45.
* Robert Patrick Newcomb, 'Review of ''Border Control and Other Autobiographical Pieces''', ''International Journal of Iberian Studies'' 33, 1, 2020, pp. 107-108.
*Robert Patrick Newcomb, 'Review of ''Gooseman, ''Hispania'' 104, 4, 2021, pp. 750-751.
*Alastair Niven, 'Celebrating an Abundance, 1984–2019: Thirty-five Literary Highlights from Aotearoa to Zimbabwe', ''Wasafiri'' 34, 4, pp.133-138.
* Elena Seoane, 'Telling the true Gibraltarian Story: an interview with Gibraltarian writer M. G. Sanchez,' ''Alicante Journal of English Studies'' 29, 2016, pp. 251-258
* John A. Stotesbury, 'Mediterranean Gothic: M. G. Sanchez’s Gibraltar Fiction in its Context,’ ''British and American Studies'' 21, 2016, pp. 156-172.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sanchez, M. G.
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Alumni of the University of Leeds
Gibraltarians
Gibraltarian writers