Rosa Montero shares her passion for writing with local audience

Spanish journalist and author Rosa Montero

Award-winning novelist and journalist Rosa Montero shared her fiction-writing experiences with the public on the second day of the Macau Literary Festival.

Born in Madrid, Montero has published 15 novels, two books of biographies, three interview compilations, a book of short stories and several children’s tales. Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

The author won the World Interview Prize in 1978, National Journalism Prize in 1980 and the Madrid Press Association Award in 2005.

Interacting with the local audience yesterday, Montero shared that she wrote her first book, which featured a talking rodent, at the age of 5.

She said that writing fiction has always been her passion and that it is how she gets in touch with her true self.

“Writing is my way of living, it’s like breathing and eating. Writing is like an exterior skeleton that keeps me [going], otherwise I’d be on the ground like a mess,” said Montero.

Montero, a reporter for the Spanish newspaper El País, said writers like her do not treat writing as an escape from reality or a form of therapy. She said the activity makes them more of who they really are, recalling a gap in her life where she stopped writing.

“I spent three years without being able to write […] It was like a drought because it’s exactly what it is: there were no images. It feels like I can’t feel things. You’re distanced from life […] you’re not capable of feeling anything,” Montero said, adding that she sees unfinished books as a waste.

The author, whose latest novel is “El Carne”, said she is a fan of characters that have aged and changed through time.

Montero’s novels have different themes and degrees of emotion.

“As the book progresses towards the last six months of the writing, and when the imaginary life accelerates, writing takes up more time – mentally and psychologically as well, as it starts having such a strength that sucks other things from the [imaginary] world into your real life,” the author explained.

“It’s the moment of impetuous because everything that happens in your real life gets funneled into that [book]. It’s a curious experience and there is a moment where you finish this book and […] could continue rewriting it, but there’s a moment where it ends.”

Script Road program director to step down

Co-founder and program director of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival, Hélder Beja, will resign on March 26, right after the festival concludes its seventh edition.

The festival canceled its invitations to three authors after organizers were informed that their their entry to the region was not guaranteed.

“As the co-founder and member of The Script Road’s direction since day one, and after the events that came to light in the past few days, ending up with the cancelation of a number of authors from the festival line-up, I consider [that] I’m in no condition to continue on board under such [a] scenario,” said Beja in a statement.
“I’ll remain on board and contribute to the making of its 7th edition, out of respect for our team and the many guests that are already on their way to Macau,” he added.

The Secretary for Security, Wong Sio Chak, commented on the case yesterday: “I do not know about that situation at all. I’m unaware of how that rumor spread.”