Alone Author Carlota Gurt - 7 Things I would like my readers to know about me

1.  I am a little obsessed with language, for example, finding the right word, making the text sound natural and poetic at the same time, choosing the ideal word order, paying attention to sentence length so the text does not sound boring, mixing different textures and language levels to make it richer. It's not my fault, I was not like that as a little girl. It’s because of the work I do, I have been a literary translator for over ten years, and when you spend thousands of hours working with words, you end up going a little crazy.

2.  I am 46 and published my first book when I was 44. You might think that's a bit late, but I think it's perfect, because it gave me the time to live many different lives before becoming a writer (I was a production manager at a prestigious arts festival, for example). Writers are vampires: they suck life, and the more they suck, the more alive they are. At 44, you also have a more solid and comprehensive view of life.  I believe that when we read, we are more interested in perspectives on life than in the stories themselves, which are just an excuse to unfold a personal view of the world.

3.  All authors write according to their character. An author's voice is a part of themselves, just like their feet and their smile. We write out of who we are. People often describe me as intense. I could not agree more, for better or worse. That intensity carries over into my writing. Readers say my style is powerful, engaging, and marked by an infectious and invigorating energy.

4.  For me, reading is a search for solace: the solace of a written world that makes sense, a world inhabited by people (characters) I can understand. Reading literature is also a search for an alternate reality that makes sense.

5.  Alone is my first novel. It's not a sad look at loneliness, it's a novel full of anger, there's some sadness too, but it's an enraged sadness. Besides loneliness, there are many other important themes: life (unbearable), uncertainty and ambiguity, our animality, metaliterature, family and love or lack of love, the mechanisms we use to escape reality (the mind as a survival device).

6.  I'm a Catalan writer, so I come from a culture that was oppressed for years and is now finally blossoming. I'm proud to be part of a new current of Catalan writers who have a fresh view of the world and very compelling and diverse voices that are now being translated into many foreign languages (Eva Baltasar, Pol Guasch, Núria Bendicho, Irene Solà and many others). I'm absolutely thrilled that my novel is coming out in English.

7.  I think good literature is like juggling: You have to master many different things at the same time: Plot (not too heavy, not too light), characters, language, the tension between form and content, and so on. The author walks a tightrope and is always on the verge of falling. Writing is therefore terrifying. Failure is always too close, too possible. So far, I've always made it to the other side.