What are the authors from the Islands writing now?

PalmOf the vast majority of writers, only the published works are known. This means not only those that found a publishing house to launch them onto the market, but, above all, those that the authors themselves considered finished, as good. But in most careers, many are left by the wayside for very diverse reasons: authors who lose interest in the topic they are working on, the emergence of new projects that turn out to be more seductive, urgent, or timely, and the daily complications that surround the writing process, which can have as much to do with inspiration as with the conditions of the jobs with which the writing profession is normally combined. Eight island authors share with ARA Balears the texts they are currently working on, when many of them do not even have a publication date secured. These are the books we may not know if we will read, but that they are all writing now.

The poetic dialogue of Antònia Vicens with herself

Antònia Vicens says she doesn't have any novel in progress because she hasn't found a character that compels her to write it. “Something has to fascinate me when I write. If a topic I haven't dealt with, or a character, who in the end are the ones who call the shots, came to me, I would write. And you can write a thousand novels, because every person who walks down the street can be a character, but I have never done this thing of writing for writing's sake,” shares the author ofAgafa la teva creu (LaBreu). However: from time to time she writes poems. “It's like a dialogue I have with myself, with what my childhood was like, but a poem is very difficult to explain. It has to be inserted into life, and not into the present: into the always”.

Clara Fiol investigates the world of glosado in Mallorca

The latest book featuring the collaboration of Clara Fiol, Poemas habitables (La Imprenta), has just been released. It is a poetic anthology of 95 authors where the Mallorcan singer and poetess publishes the poem ‘Rajola’. In parallel to this, however, Fiol has several projects underway, although some of them have been put on hold due to work reasons and her dedication to writing a work that who knows if she will ever publish, but which, as she says, is “where I have dedicated myself the most to writing during these past few months”: La Asociación Cultural Glosadors de Mallorca. Tradition and transformation of the world of glosado on the island, which will serve as her final master's project for her studies in cultural management.

Sebastià Portell explores other forms of desire

A year and a half ago, Sebastià Portell experienced grief as an author: after two years of work, he had to discard a novel. “I saw it die in my hands,” he admits. Shortly after, however, and following the theatrical adaptation of his first novel, El dia que va morir David Bowie, by Pau Coya, he reconnected with his early texts, “strange and marginal,” and undertook the writing of the novel he now has in hand. He advances that it is “between fiction and reflection” and that he explores “other forms of desire.” “Not as different sexualities, because there are as many as there are people, but as different ways of articulating it, from the body and also from the way we analyze it.”

Aina Fullana writes about different forms of malaise

Aina Fullana is immersed in the promotion of the translation into Spanish of her first novel, the successful Els dies bons. Meanwhile, however, she has just finished writing the second. “It’s quite difficult for me to say anything because I finished it very recently,” she acknowledges, and points to some similarities with the first – this one is also set in Mallorca – and quite a few differences. “It’s shorter and has more gaps and silences, it’s not as explicit,” shares Fullana. The central theme, she advances, is different forms of discomfort. “It starts from a discomfort related to mental health, but which, for me, is related to a general, structural discomfort, which has to do with things like, for example, the issue of housing”.

A hundred characters signed by Josep Pons SansalonI

It was in October 2021 when Josep Pons Sansaloni published his first novel, Un final (Raig Verd). Then the writing of the second began and just a month ago, he says, he has finished a first draft. The work has more than a hundred characters, although the protagonist is a woman of about fifty who helps people face death. “It is a novel about journeys, both through geography and history, with death and mourning as its central axis”, shares the author, who describes it as a “little commercial” novel with a great diversity of registers. “I am quite satisfied, honestly”, he says, “because I think the first one has helped me to improve as a writer”.

Maite Salord delves into a choral portrait of current society

“I have a novel started that, if everything goes as I wish, will be a portrait of current society”. This is how Maite Salord explains it, from whom El temps habitat will be released at the end of summer in the labutxaca edition. “I already had it in mind when I was finishing the previous one”, she admits, “and I have just finished a chapter that was important. I thought that if this one didn't turn out, there wouldn't be a novel”. Among other things, this choral story speaks about everything we don't know about the people close to us. Furthermore, Salord has also recently finished writing a book of narratives with the provisional title, Dir la vida des de la mort, written with the psychologist specialized in grief treatment and palliative care, Belén Calafell.

The double protagonist and the thousand ideas of Jaume Oliver

The last winner of the Ciutat de Palma de Novela prize, Jaume Oliver, already has the first part of his next work “broadly closed and corrected”. He only advances, however, that he has “two protagonists who in some way are two versions of the same person”. “Now I’m letting it rest to think about how I should end the story, which I haven't decided yet”, confesses the also journalist, “and in the meantime new stories come to me that I am writing. Some take on their own dimension, as a story, or who knows if as a future novel or as a subplot of one of them”, reflects Oliver, who assures that he dedicated more than three years to previous novels, although with this one he does not yet have any completion date set.

Sebastià Alzamora's new novel “can no longer be helped”

The way in which the writer Sebastià Alzamora defines the point his new novel, which he will publish once again with Proa, is as concise as it is eloquent. “I say that I am in the phase where there is no turning back”, he explains with a laugh, the one from Llucmajor, who immediately adds that while he writes he usually encounters numerous surprises. “But there comes a moment when you see that you have already done a quantity of work that allows you to see what it looks like, and what tone, and where it is heading. What the novel says, you know.” He reserves the details, which are difficult to specify with a project underway, but he acknowledges that, although he has been writing it for two years, the idea has accompanied him for a decade.