Marta Quintin. Photography, courtesy of the author.
Marta Quintin He is from Zaragoza and has worked as journalist in the EFE Agency and in Cadena SER. He is also a columnist in El Periódico de Aragón. He has won the Tomás Seral y Casas short story award several times. His first novel was tell me a word and then it came the color of light. His latest title is The key to the stars. I thank you very much for this interview where he tells us about her and several other topics.
Marta Quintín — Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest novel is titled The key to the stars. What do you tell us about it and where did the idea come from?
MARTA QUINTÍN: I tell a story about the uprooting, about what it means lose your home, your roots and your identity. A theme that is a constant, that remains fully valid throughout the centuries, as can be seen in the two timelines that it intertwines, separated by five hundred years and that, however, have immense parallels: the expulsion of the Sephardim from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 and the economic crisis of 2012, in which many people faced evictions, forced migrations...
All of this crossed by daily and timeless struggles, such as the desire to find and keep love, the chiaroscuros of friendship, the complexity of family relationships, the ins and outs of sexuality, our daily pulse with luck and destiny, and, In short, the incessant search for our place in the world.
as soon as the genesis of the novel, arose when I found out that muchos of the sephardic, upon leaving the crowns of Aragon and Castile, They took the keys to their houses with them., with the conviction that sooner or later they would return. Realizing that human beings cannot give up that hope, that of return, moved me deeply, and I knew that I had to tell this story.
- AL: Can you remember any of your first readings? And the first story you wrote?
MQ: There is evidence, recorded on video, that I began to read even before I knew how to do it: at the age of two I was already turning the pages of the stories and I was making up the stories as I went, out loud, based on the illustrations. But, anecdote aside, I remember starting to read with books by The Steamboat, first with those from the collection with blue covers and, later, with the orange one. I also delved very early into classic stories by Dumas, Salgari, Stevenson, Conan Doyle…
As for my first forays into writing, I started with a poem on some horses who ended up tied to a merry-go-round for getting too close. And also with a story about the life of a umbrella with which I won my first literary contest, which was a very important, foundational step, since it gave me confidence and encouragement to continue in this matter of putting together letters.
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
MQ: Gabriel has especially marked me García Márquez, Carmen Martin Gaite, Ana Maria Matute, Christine Peri rossi, Dostoievski...
- AL: What character would you have liked to meet and create?
MQ: Know, to Ulises. Create, to The magician.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
MQ: The truth is that I adapt to doing both in any circumstance. If anything, especially when I was younger, when reading I immersed myself so intensely in the story that I fingered and squeezed the pages out of pure nerve, out of raw emotion. and my books ended up with wavy, grayish pages at the height of where I placed my fingers. Those who saw me, so absorbed and enraged, they burst out laughing. From the outside, it had to be quite a spectacle.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
MQ: In the silence of me property, on the couch, when I have free time.
- AL: What genres do you like?
MQ: I'm not very adept at genres. I have read many classic books, and now I try to keep up to date with new developments, but with literature a little outside the more commercial circuit. And I almost always opt for novel, although I don't mind reading theater or stories from time to time. poems, pecking here and there, in isolation.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
MQ: A few days ago I finished I'm afraid bullfighter, by Pedro Lemebel. I also read very recently Hurricane season, by Fernanda Melchor. Both highly recommended.
As for writing, right now I'm in fallow after The key to the stars, waiting for the spark of a story to reignite. I need my rest times between novel and novel to gather new experiences that end up detonating on paper.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is?
MQ: Focused on very powerful groups that tend to play it safe, and dotted with a few independent publishers who believe in what they publish and weather the storm as best they can. But, if you look for it, there are interesting proposals and I think greater plurality. Voices that previously lived very much on the margins are heard, andand works are rescued that had been thrown away, sometimes in really careful and beautiful editions.
- AL: How are you handling the current moment we live in?
MQ: I carry it with worry and helplessness. Although, on a day-to-day basis, you have to continue, of course.