Photography: Yolanda Fidalgo, IMC Literary Agency website.
Yolanda Fidalgo was born in Zamora in 1970 and studied Tourism Business at the University of Salamanca, but his passion has always been literature. He started with the poetry until he decided to make the leap to prose and premiered with beyond the volcanoes. And the second is The bonfires of heaven. In this interview He tells us about all of them and much more. I really appreciate the time and kindness of her in assisting me.
Yolanda Fidalgo - Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest novel is The bonfires of heaven. What do you tell us about it and where did the idea come from?
Yolanda Fidalgo: As a child, you could still see the stars from Zamora, the city where I grew up. I remember my father pointing out the constellations, telling me about the giant Orion, the chariot of the Pleiades, Halley's comet that crossed our skies in the year 86. I loved those stories, they made me dream, they were the beginning of my interest in astronomy. But the novel arose from the biography of a man: Milton Humason, the muleteer of the stars. It fascinated me that a person like him, without academic training, could become one of the astronomers most important of the early twentieth century on their own merits. He began as a muleteer in the mountains, with the strings of mules that carried the pieces of the telescope to the top, since there were no roads. He ended up studying the sky with the largest telescope in the world until then.
But that's just the stage. Bonfires is a story of passion, of overcoming, of fighting for what one wants, of intrigue. Of love.
- AL: Can you remember any of your first readings? And the first story you wrote?
YF: It's funny, but I can't remember what my first readings were. What I do remember is that I read everything that fell into my hands from a very young age, including the numbers of the Readers Digest who came home every month. She spent a lot of time reading. I liked the stories The fivethose of Elena Fortun with its Celia, and many others. There were books that left their mark on me: the Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, The Little Prince, the poems of Neruda or Emily's Dickinson.
And I don't remember the first story I wrote either. At first I wrote poetry. As a teenager, I wrote some short stories and diaries too, like many people. There was a time when I gave it up: when my kids were little. Later, I got my hobby back, I felt like trying novels, and that's how it came about beyond the volcanoes, who won the IV Marta de Mont Marça International Narrative Prizel, and that was my jump to publication.
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
YF: It's hard for me to choose. I like many and very varied. One that marked me a lot and of whom I have read all of his work translated from him, is Charles Dickens. Another is Carmen Martin Gaite. Or Joyce Carol Oates.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
YF: As a child I always wanted to be like Pippi Longstocking. We had things in common, but not freedom. I wouldn't have minded having tea with Sherlock Holmes, or attend a dance with the Sir Darcy. Or walk the English moors with heathcliff, or build a shelter next to Ayla and Jondalar. And so it could go on ad infinitum.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
YF: I can't, I have children, heh, heh. And in this sense, it is appreciated that they are getting older (although at the same time, what a shame it is to leave their childhoods behind).
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
YF: It's usually a bit before dinner, late in the afternoon. When everyone at home is in their place and there is a bit of silence.
- AL: Are there other genres that you like?
YF: Are there any that I don't like? The truth, I usually read less fantasy, for example. But not because I don't like it.
- What are you reading now? And writing?
YF: I just read the ungrateful, Pedro Simon, which I liked a lot. now i'm with The beast, which is a must read. Then I'll start with All the beautiful horses, from Cormac McCarthy.
Am writing my fourth novel (The third is already ready, awaiting the date for its publication). An history about intrigue set in the XNUMXth century which takes place in part Sierra de la Culebra, in Zamora, the beautiful region where my parents were born.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is and what decided you to try to publish?
YF: Complicated, even for those of us who publish with a traditional publisher. Many books are published, so many that it is very difficult for the reader to notice yours, to choose you if you are not one of the well-known. But I write because I like it, because I enjoy doing it. What comes next is welcome. In my case, as I already mentioned, I submitted my first novel to the IV Marta de Mont Marçal International Narrative Prize, I won it and that opened the doors to publication for me. Thanks to a publishing house, Roca, which fearlessly bets on new writers, many of them women.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to keep something positive for future stories?
YF: Oddly enough, this is the question that most I find it hard to answer. Because for me the pandemic has not meant the same as for other people. In 2019 I was diagnosed breast cancer and I was in treatment, which lasted just until the state of alarm was decreed. That meant spending the year 2020 giving thanks for being alive, for being able to enjoy my family, for getting up every morning. So I'm not objective with this, I appreciate every day, I don't care if I have to be in quarantine or with a mask, because the important thing is to stay here. Yes, covid scares me. As everyone. but iI try to enjoy the good things that life gives me: my family, the sun in winter, the trees on the banks of the Duero, the books… And so many small but important things.