--- What has been your relationship with writing since you were little?
--- When I was little I was a bit shy and used writing as a resource to communicate with myself. But, at the same time, when you communicate with yourself it's as if you want to communicate with someone outside. Perhaps, that someone outside that you don't have, fills a role...
--- And with reading?
--- Reading Tintin or Little Women was a source of nourishment. Now it still is. When I read a book, I think: "wow, it's oxygenating me, it's opening me up, it's giving me little lights inside my head, it's turning on little lights for me." I think this is what I like.
--- Did you already want to be a writer when you were little?
--- No. Every day I wanted to be something different. One day I wanted to be an orchestra conductor, the next day a dolphin caretaker, and the next, a pastry chef. I think something I had as a child and still have, luckily, is curiosity.
--- You started as a teacher and ended up as a writer. You say that, in life, you often do things in reverse.
--- I think I'm lucky that all my paths have been done in reverse. Otherwise, I find it so boring and so predictable... I studied teaching and ended up working as a primary school teacher. I did a substitution and didn't know what to do with the money they gave me. A teacher told me there was a workshop at Catorze and suggested we sign up. On the first day of class, they gave us an exercise, which was to write a text based on a painting by Ignasi Blanch. They liked my text and suggested publishing it in Catorze. And the next text, too. Then, in a natural way, ---for me it's like a kind of miracle!--- they suggested I keep writing and start doing interviews for Catorze. And, very quickly, it became a job.
--- You often say you were afraid they would discover you weren't really good. How do you deal with imposter syndrome now? Do you still suffer from it?
--- I would love to say no. How good it must be to live without insecurity! I believe it's something you have to learn to live with. It's good that it's there because it makes you more cautious. Otherwise, we would never stop, it would be a runaway horse. What's not good is for it to dominate you, to crush you, or to nullify you. I think our coexistence is fine. Sometimes it flares up, sometimes it sleeps, but it must be watched because it's nothing more than your head.
--- The Catalan Sally Rooney is often sought after. You have been labeled a millennial writer. How do you live with this label?
--- I think it's a huge nonsense. You are young when you are 16, when you are 18, when you are in your early twenties, but then youth ends. At 30, you are not a young person. My little sisters laugh at me all day because they say I'm a boomer. We are infantilizing society. For me, growing older is a source of pride.
--- Last year you won the Josep Pla award. How did you receive it? What has it meant for you?
--- I received it with great joy. What we were saying before about the impostor or insecurity, I thought: "this is something that will last a year, more or less. While it lasts, you have to live it with joy, you cannot live it as a burden or as a penance." I live it as a gift because it has brought me many very good things. Perhaps I have done 40 or 50 presentations throughout Catalonia. Also in Menorca and Mallorca. Most of the presentations have been done by friends.
--- You won the Josep Pla with your first book. This is a good injection of self-esteem…
--- Yes, it's true that it quiets the voice a bit, although it will always be there. Above all, I'm happy because I had wanted to write a book for a long time and it's done. Therefore, what you sometimes think about in life, "I want to do this, I want to do that," well, what I wanted so much, it's done. Therefore, now, we will do something else. What I do next, we'll see what happens.
--- Do you want to write another book?
--- Yes, I'm thinking about it, but I want to have time to do it. That I am convinced, that I like it, that it is being made inside, and that is also very important. It's not that you sit at the computer and force it. It's like an oven. You put something in an oven and it cooks. And, suddenly, the chicken is done. It's a tempo that everyone, every person who writes, knows is different, it can be shorter or it can be longer.
--- What is your method? What was the method you followed in your first book?
--- Another one of those miracles happened to me. I did a report about a publishing house that publishes, in English, authors of minority languages. I asked Bibiana: "how is everything in Scotland? Maybe I'll go this summer." And she told me: "come to my house, I won't be there, I'll leave you my house all July." Without knowing me at all! I stayed at her house all July and, in August, I went wandering. I ended up in the middle of a mountain, in a cabin. I don't suffer from loneliness, I usually enjoy it and I need it. There I laid the foundations of the book.
--- In the book, you precisely talk about loneliness.
--- Loneliness is not a negative thing as such. Being with what surrounds you, being able to go for a walk, having time to listen to music, to read, to get bored, to not be on your phone… When I went to Scotland, I turned off my phone. We are like phone junkies.
--- Do you dedicate a lot of time to it? What is your relationship with social media and your phone?
--- To create, it is essential to turn off your phone. When you write, you enter layers that if you are looking at WhatsApp, you cannot re-enter. There is like an entry path into that world. I think it's incompatible.
--- What are your readers like?
--- Perhaps what interests them are the type of reflections. That more intimate side, trying to understand the depth and complexity of people. Because that's what I do. I don't do anything else, it seems to me.