Photography: (c) Ana Portnoy. Courtesy of Laura Mas.
Laura More She is a Canarian by birth. Degree in Journalism, has collaborated in various media and is also a literary manager. Poetry fan, now has made the leap to literature with a historical genre debut novel, Socrates' teacher. I really appreciate your time and kindness for this interview that he has granted me.
LAURA MAS - INTERVIEW
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your debut novel in literature is Socrates' teacher. What does it tell us?
LAURA MAS: My novel narrates a series of encounters between Diotima and Socrates in which the teacher teaches the student the true meaning of love. I felt the need to rescue the figure of Diotima, a priestess and philosopher of which hardly anything is known, but which appears in The banquet of Plato as a revolutionary and clairvoyant woman. His ideas inspired the concept of platonic love, whose true meaning is far from the current one.
- AL: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
LM: One of the first books I read was The Little Princeby Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was an illustrated edition that my father gave me and that I constantly reread. Before embarking on writing a novel, I had my little steps writing some stories and poems for magazines and anthologies.
- AL: What was that title that struck you and why?
LM: When I was a teenager, it marked me a lot Young Werther's Sorrowsby Goethe. The passion and sensitivity of its protagonist deeply moved me, since at that time I was also a young and melancholic in love.
- AL: A favorite writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
LM: Margaret YourcenarAlbert Camus, Robert Graves, Clarice Lispector… The list would be very long. Three contemporary authors who never let me down are Lorenzo Oliván, Chantal maillard and Luis García Huntsman.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
LM: There are so many ... If I had to stay with one, it would surely be the complex and nonconformist Emma bovary that Flaubert created.
- AL: Any special habits when writing or reading?
LM: To write I need solitude and I often wear classical music of great composers like Bach, Chopin or Debussy. It helps me abstract my mind and makes my writing flow better. Instead, I increasingly need the silence when read and I like to do it drinking a cup of tea or coffee, stretched out on the sofa or bed and in the company of my cats.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
LM: The best place for both writing and reading is my floor. There I find the tranquility and rest necessary to evade the mind and concentrate. At the time of write, lately I prefer to take advantage of the daylight hours; Before it was quite nocturnal, but now I set a daily writing routine that begins to first hour in the morning. Instead, I ground read starting at six o'clock afternoon and, sometimes, they can give me as many if the book catches me.
- AL: Other genres that you like?
LM: Besides the historical genre, I really like the test, biography and, of course, the poetry.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
LM: On the recommendation of my editor, Miryam Galaz, I am currently reading The days of the Caucasusby Banine. I am in the process of writing my second novel, which will be a historical thriller with many palace intrigues.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or can you keep something positive that will serve you for future fictional stories?
LM: I think everyone we can stay with some positive teaching as a result of the pandemic, although we are going through a very complicated time at all levels. I suppose that, in some way and although I am not fully aware of it, since I write a historical novel, my feelings and experiences are reflected in my lyrics.