“I write to you / because I seek you. / And because I want to kill you”. “They are mistaken: / darkness hides nothing. / It makes everything shine”. “I will tear out my eyes / so as not to see / that you are looking”. These are just three of the fragments with which the journalist and collaborator of l’ARA Balears Clàudia Darder (sa Pobla, 1994) debuts as a poet with Com una cussa (Adia Edicions), a poetry book with which she was a finalist for the Salvador Iborra award. In one of the epilogues, the poet Joan Tomàs Martínez Grimalt defines it as “a piece of hot meat that still beats”.

The exoskeleton is not the title of a zoology book. Or is it. It is the title of Jèssica Ferrer's latest poetry collection, a work that won the Maria Mercè Marçal prize and has just arrived in bookstores. In her first book, Som aquí, Ferrer described massacres from the pig's point of view; now, in an exercise that lies between entomology and metaphysics, she speaks of the limits of the 'I' and the 'we' using the exoskeleton as a metaphor; the exoskeleton is the external skeleton found, for example, in ants. Between Som aquí (2022) and L’exoesquelet (2026), Ferrer has also had time to publish Fissures (2023), which constitutes one of the most dazzling careers in Catalan poetry in recent times. Jèssica Ferrer was born in Ibiza in 1993; in addition to writing, performing with Ses Honorables Virtuts Il·lògiques, and promoting the publication of Revista 078, in the summer she cultivates the garden and collects carob beans.

Between an essay and some memoirs and halfway between an allegation and a question, with as much rigor as personal perspective. This is the ground where Llucia Ramis's (Palma, 1977) latest book, Un metro cuadrado, written and published thanks to the No Ficció award from Libros del Asteroide, is situated. In it, the return to all the houses where she has lived serves the writer and journalist as a common thread to delve into all the ingredients with which the current housing crisis has been cooked. The Catalan version, published by Anagrama, will go on sale on May 13.

A new award is added to the career of Sebastià Alzamora (Llucmajor, 1972), already recognized with awards such as the Carles Riba, the Sant Jordi and the Jocs Florals de Barcelona, among others. But upon receiving the Josep Maria Llompart for best poetry work in Catalan for Sala Augusta, followed by Llengua materna (Proa), awarded by the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC) within the framework of the Cavall Verd awards, the writer considers that he is the one who is added to a list of authors who, he says, he hopes not to disappoint. Miquel Martí i Pol, Vicent Andrés Estellés and Antònia Vicens, among others, have received it before him. “It gives a special thrill because those who recognize your work are your colleagues, the people with whom you share your profession,” he confesses.

He was born on November 22, 1984, at eight months gestation, and before arriving home (first in Inca and, a few years later, in Caimari) he had to spend almost a month in an incubator. His mother remembers those moments with sadness: "After four or five days I went back to work so I could enjoy my maternity leave when the baby was home," she notes. It was just before Christmas that year that the family was able to properly welcome their son. The son, who was so tiny it was almost pitiful, is the writer, poet, translator, and contributor to this weekly publication, Jaume C. Pons AlordaHis mother, Teresa Alorda, tells us about him. Six years later, she had her second daughter, Gloria.

The island's literary scene is constantly evolving. In recent times, in fact, a new generation of writers has emerged, sharing a number of common threads: born during the 1990s and early 2000s, almost all confess to having written practically since they were born. Many of them have managed to publish thanks to an award, and for all of them, having published has affected their writing in one way or another. Even so, more than one describes the literary sector as not very permeable, or even hermetic, and they don't hesitate to share the doubts and contradictions they experience as part of it in order to reach their readers—although most prefer to discuss all of this either in writing or in WhatsApp audio messages, rather than in person. They have diverse interests and influences, ranging from iconic pieces of recent audiovisual media such as Twin Peaks From classics of world literature, such as José Saramago, Mercè Rodoreda, and Emily Dickinson, to other authors of her generation, from Laura Gost to Sebastià Portell, including Núria Bendicho and Pilar Codony. These are the new voices of Catalan literature emerging from the Balearic Islands.

In 2019, Natalia Castro (Mahón, 1989), from Menorca, posted a tweet saying that if the world were to end, she would spend it writing a thesis on the apocalypse. And it was precisely during the lockdown the following year that she finished an investigation that has led to... The end-of-the-world partyThe latest winner of the Anagrama Essay Prize, this Princeton University professor reviews the social configuration of the last twenty years in Spain from urban, historical, and cultural perspectives, all permeated by an apocalyptic vision. Eurovegas, the 15M movement, and COVID-19 are explained through the lens of Susan Sontag. Mad Max and the play Bankers vs. Zombies, among others.

Fifty years after publishing his debut, I leave you, love, the sea as a pledge, the writer Carme Riera (Palma, 1948) has left in writing some reflections on literature in Thank you, a title dedicated to its readers and published by Edicions 62. The book also serves to reveal some lesser-known aspects about the author, such as that she began writing in Catalan thanks to Aina Moll, who finds that the censor's report on her first book "gets it pretty right" and that she is a big fan ofThe Simpsons.

The first protagonist of this story is a boy, a boy of about eight or nine years old who closely observes a youth player, driven by an endless curiosity, an unquenchable thirst. Inside that piece of furniture, surely taller and undoubtedly much older and much more overwhelming than he is, lies an entire life, although the boy doesn't know exactly what it contains. He suspects it's all papers, and he knows for certain that they are important to his mother, words that can be as defining as they are definitive. "Can I stick my nose in and read something?" he dares to ask, finally, one day. "If one day I see you doing it, if you break this rule, all these papers will be burned and nothing will remain but ashes. Do you feel me?" his mother replies. "Since I'm dead, go ahead with the chatter. But until then, don't try to get close."

Real life can be very much like a movie. Sometimes, it even seems like time goes in slow motion. One of these cinematic moments is when two people start running from two different points to meet and hug. This was the bread and butter of every summer when vacations arrived in times before cell phones and summer friends could go months—the entire school year—without knowing anything about each other. This was the childhood and adolescence of María de la Paz Janer (Palma, 1966), who arrived in Llubí every August, dazzling everyone. Her friend, Maria Llompart, tells us this, as she recalls how they would run to hug each other. "You'll be friends," her aunt, who lived across the street from María de la Paz's godmother's house, told them. She wasn't wrong.

"It was a shot in the dark." As he says this through the speakerphone, you can sense the tone, even now, of astonishment; and a half-laugh from someone who doesn't know how it all happened. It's like a sigh that seems to express "Who would have ever told us!" The shot in question was giving him a notebook: Laura's Tales, when she was seven years old. "It was a way to stimulate a hobby, we didn't know where it would go," says Francesc Gost, who gave the notebook to his daughter, Laura Gost. Of course, it stimulated her: at 31, she has written three novels –The big cousin, The world becomes simple and The ashes in the pool– and some plays. Since that gift, she's been writing stories and tales, and for a few months now, Laura has been telling them to her first child. By the way: when he was born, a friend of Francisco's said Laura Gost was the name of a screenwriter. He wasn't wrong.

She was one of the most distinctive voices in Spanish-language literature—still very much alive today—and won the most prestigious awards in a time that was much more difficult for women than it is today. She also spent a few months as a guest of Mallorca, where she set her life on the island. First memory, the novel that won her the Nadal Prize and one of her favorites, according to her own admission. We remember Ana María Matute on the 100th anniversary of her birth (July 26, 1925).