Before she became a writer, she was — and in many ways still is — an avid reader. “I’ve always read, and writing is, for me, a way to continue reading more deeply.” She was good, although it took her a while to believe it. “I started writing at twelve, but I was so shy, so embarrassed, that the times I entered a contest, I did it under a friend’s name so that, if I won, it would be her instead of me.” Ana Moya has arrived at the Bar at dusk, before the moon rises, as if inviting her to fly away with it, as Frank Sinatra is singing right now in Fly me to the moon. She orders a glass of red wine. “The worst part is that sometimes I won and my friends didn’t want to share the prize afterwards!” she laughs.
She studied Psychology, “although I never practiced,” and she spent almost three decades working at the Centre for African and Intercultural Studies, combining it with studies of Spanish language and literature and African cultures, one of her great passions. In her thirties, she moved with her partner to live in Namibia for a few years. From there, she returned with the manuscript of her first work, which in some way continues to be the one of her loves. “Cafè Zoo takes its name from a bar in Windhoek and is the novel with which I broke the barrier of showing what I wrote to the world.” It won the Ciutat de Badalona prize and was “my entry into the world of literature, a time I remember as very sweet.”
This debut was followed by Immorality Act, her first foray into Spanish narrative, set in apartheid South Africa, that was published by a very small publishing house. “Treated with great affection by a fantastic editor, it never found, however, much of an audience.” Her next stop was Lisbon, where she and her partner stayed for six years. “Here El carrer on vius was born, which is set on Rua de Caetanos, where we lived for a while, and where I portray an idealized Lisbon, almost like a musical or film set populated by eccentric characters.” After being a finalist in a contest, the book ended up being published by La Magrana thanks to Guillem Terribas, founder of the mythical Llibreria 22 in Girona.
“Looking back, I realise that my literature has a strong connection with the places I discover”, reflects the author, almost as if realizing –here and now– that, more than another way of finding her place in the world, writing is, in itself, her place in the world.
Switching to Airplane Mode
But things change. They always do. After thirty-eight years of activity, and despite its evident cultural and social value, the Centre for African and Intercultural Studies has closed and Ana Moya now works for the Ateneu Barcelonès Writing School, combining teaching tasks with administrative ones. And she writes, of course, because not doing so would be like swimming against all the currents of her own nature.
“In 2024 I received the Barcelona Crea grant for a project of stories related to interculturality that aims to interrogate to what extent there is communication or lack of communication when we interact with the person next to us”. The project is called Mode Avió and is currently underway. Writing is, above all, a matter of time.
Added to this is the writer's entry into the Grupo Bojador, a collective formed by five authors that combines multitudinous reading clubs, through which a good part of the cream of our letters has passed, with the writing of stories that they publish in collective volumes such as the recent La habitación 320 (Nazarí). “I really like this sense of community that exists among us”. The idea of creating, through their narratives and the analysis of others, a kind of great collective cultural narrative.
Literarily returning home
The writer spent her childhood in Nou Barris, where the bulk of her sentimental memory linked to the city was formed. “Years later I have always lived in Sant Antoni, but I adore the memory of my childhood in the neighborhood, and of leaving it to go down to that Plaça del Pi full of color, with places like Makoki, and walking alone through its adjacent streets. Or afternoons playing role-playing games at Gigamesh, the only girl in a large group of boys. Or, of course, when my father and I went to the Sant Antoni Market”.
The Barcelona she remembers, woven from the sum of emotional memories of unrepeatable streets from the past, where perhaps there wasn't (or isn't remembered) the unbearable noise that there is in the current one, has crept into the author's narrative. We see it reflected in some stories from Bojador and, who knows, if in the stories from Mode avió. "I had never before felt like writing about the city, but now I feel this need," she confesses, emptying her glass of wine down her throat.
– Something you might feel like writing about is our gastronomic offer. Dinner time is approaching and here there's everything: tapas, à la carte, sandwiches, portions… All good!
The notes of Don't get around much anymore, by Duke Ellington, accompany the twilight. The sky has darkened. The moon begins to emerge. Around us, the city slips into its evening rhythm. Ana Moya sketches a smile that never quite lost its timid essence.
"Some tapas could be very good," she replies, eager to snack on something, and to check if this nocturnal bar situation can also add to that broad emotional geography that defines and places her as a writer.