L’escriMexican writer Valeria Luiselli, widely regarded as one of the most significant voices in contemporary international literature, visited UIC Barcelona to give a masterclass in the context of the presentation of her new novel, Beginning Middle End. The novel recounts the journey of a mother and her teenage daughter to Sicily and explores themes such as memory, myth and the reinvention of life.

The session was introduced by Laura Gandolfi, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, who noted that it was “a real honour” to welcome Luiselli to the University.  “Reading Valeria is learning to see differently, to listen to the stories that inhabit the margins,” she said.

Speaking in a warm and reflective tone, Luiselli explained that the session also represented a kind of “experiment”: an opportunity to talk about her new novel before beginning the book tour, as she admitted that she does not yet fully know “what it is about”. This admission opened up a thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation about the processes and uncertainties inherent in literary creation.

During her talk, the author shared some of her key intellectual and literary influences – including Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, T. S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson – and reflected on ideas of origin and fragmentation as elements present in all creative work.

The masterclass centred on literature as a tool for understanding the multiple layers of the present and of memory, as well as on the need to rethink the narratives through which we interpret reality.

“I like writing because when I write, I remember, and when I remember, I rewrite. If writing is a process of recovering memories and reshaping them, what is the result? Fiction is nothing more than taking what already existed and giving it new meaning. Perhaps remembering is simply learning something for a second time,” she said.

The event concluded with a question-and-answer session in which students and members of the university community engaged with the author on the creative process, the fear of the “blank page” and the capacity of writing to reconnect us with, and reconcile us to, reality. In Luiselli’s words: “Life is not easy for anyone, but at least we will always have the ability to narrate it.”