Talk: “How being cultural journalist in Barcelona and, however, write!”
INS Montsacopa | January 24, 2017
Tuesday, 24 January 2017 , Olot
Talk: “How being cultural journalist in Barcelona and, however, write!”
Marina Espasa talked about her career, that is to say, what she made to get being a writer and a literary critic today. After studying Romance Philology (at the UB), she did some PhD courses in Comparative Literature at the UPF. Also, a master in Writing for Television and Cinema (at the UAB). «I already had a folder full of titles». When the XXI century started, a municipal local television of Barcelona, BTV, changed the director. With the arrival of Joan Tàpia, former director of La Vanguardia, there were a number of changes to the program schedule, and one of these was the development of a program about books, interviews to writers, reports on libraries and bookstores and recommendations. Marina Espasa began working as a reporter, under the orders of the journalist Emili Manzano. «This work opened my world, the publishing and writers Barcelona, bookstores, libraries and readers, the ones who recommended books (Javier Pérez Andújar, Victor Amela, Andrés Ehrenhaus, Mita Casacuberta, Ada Castells Eugenia Broggi, Joan Riambau…) and the viewers who wrote us and with whom we kept an open dialogue». She was working for six years in BTV, then four years in TV3, where the program started to be called “L’hora del lector” (Time of reader) and it remained more or less the same structure. «I find time to write my first novel, La dona que es va perdre (The woman who was lost), which was published in 2012.»
Simultaneously, she began writing literary criticism in the magazine Time Out (which was born in 2008) and then she made the same in the newspaper Ara (which was born in 2011). She combined this work with the one as a writing lecturer at the Writing School of Ateneu Barcelonès and the writing of her second novel, El dia del cérvol (The Day of Deer) (L’Altra, 2016). And almost one year ago that she has an order from Barcelona City Council to direct the UNESCO Office Barcelona City of Literature.