flowers and serpents

...and here we are. Flowers and Serpents, a collection of stories by 14 English-speaking writers in Barcelona, edited by me and designed by Víctor is in the world. And otherwise it's Sant Jordi, it's sunny, I was brought a long-stemmed rose in bed this morning, and the day as been full of books and deliciousness. I'm off to enjoy the rest of it! Scroll down for a gratuitous picture of my cat...

new niu publishers

Tomorrow in Saint George's Day, birthday of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Nabokov and my father, Day of the Book and the Rose in Catalunya. I generally celebrate it by walking and looking at the books and enjoying any chance to celebrate the written word. Last year I even appeared on a newspaper supplement as one of the poster-children for reading! That was pretty special. But this year is even more special because Víctor and I converted ourselves into a literary editors and publishers for the occasion.

For a few years now, I've been part of an English writing group here in Barcelona. We meet every week to discuss each others writing, suggest improvements, give encouragment and so on. Members are a mixed bag of English teachers, journalists, translators, editors and others (we had a doctor once, and we currently have an ex-priest) and come from pretty much any English-speaking country you can think of, as well as some Scandinavians and exceptionally fluent locals. ANYWAY, in time for Sant Jordi this year, I decided to organize a collection of some of our short stories. I edited it (I work as an editor anyway, but it was great to get to edit fiction for a change) and Víctor did the graphic design (he also has a history designing books).

We snapped these pictures the day before it went to the printers... it's amazing how a DSLR can make anything look glamourous, even head-ache, eye-ache, back-ache, lack of sleep, lack of hair-washing or make-up applying... I think they're just golden because I was so content to be doing what I was doing. (Although seriously, next time writer people, we're going to talk about formatting before you give me your submissions). It looks like I'm fake-working but I really was correcting like a maniac at the time.

The anthologies are back from the printers and I can't wait to share them here tomorrow!

library of babel

I think I'm not the only one in this space who loves a good book, so I thought I'd share these pictures from one of the most impressive bookshops I've been in. Perhaps its location makes it seem even better...it's the type of second-hand bookshop you might imagine in a creative corner of a big city...but not in a suburb of a small town a good forty minutes by train from the metropolis. Victor, Rosa and I dragged ourselves out there on a Sunday afternoon to see an exhibition, and our jaws more or less dropped as we walked into an unassuming warehouse. On the inside, old books were piled on tables and in tight rows up to the ceiling and a wooden bar decked out with chandaliers and wooden ladders served (extortionate, every silver lining has a cloud) drinks. You can get a glimpse of it behind me in the first picture. I snagged a copy of Dubliners for four euros and went to town taking pictures.

P.S. Rosa and I have a history of being photographed in bookstores...sometimes even more glamorously!

tulips!

While I was in Amsterdam it was National Tulip Day. This sounded almost too coincidentally perfect, but we discovered there are in fact three national tulip days per year. In any case, it was definitely an unexpected and charming celebration. The Dam was filled with thousands of tulips, attached to their bulbs, making a picture on the ground, we joined a fairly civilized line, were given a plastic bag and were told we could take as many as 20 tulips away with us. Inside it was a bit of a free-for-all, with children (and bloggers, clearly) posing for photos and people trampling each other in search of the elusive orange blooms, but I left with a big bag stuffed with mostly-closed bulbs. They somehow all survived being carted around for the rest of the day, the trip to the airport at 6am, and the trip back to Barcelona, and filled our apartment with pop-art colourful blooms for the next two weeks!

shitty christmas

That would be shitty in the Catalan sense of course. I've gone on at length in past years about the Catalan "Caga Tió" tradition of feeding a log, and then hitting it so it shits presents, but this year Víctor and I organized a Caga Tió party to initiate our foreign friends (and some gate-crashing Catalans) into the tradition.

Otherwise, it's been a home-made sort of Christmas, which suits me perfectly. I bought a little Christmas tree at the cathedral market and staggered home with it, and we made paper ornaments, and also a paper Happy New Year sign for the front hall. My sister and I had TWO all-day baking Sundays to stock my freezer with a dizzying amount of traditional family goodies (sugar cookies, rum logs, truffles, magic squares, shortbread, gingerbread, birdsnests)and Víctor drew a delightful Christmas window for us.









Anyway, I have been failing on blogging lately, which hasn't been due to lack of interest, but lack of internet (we made an executive decision that we get more done and have more fun without its evil influence at home) but I REALLY intend to be back before the new year with a Year in Review, and perhaps even and outfit (I KNOW!)

Happy Post-binge detox day, meanwhile!

exhibitionism

Some photos from the opening night of Víctor´s exhibition, at which actually I wasn´t exhibitionist at all, being the photographer. Someone did grab the shot above of me though, taking a break and catching up with a friend. Anyway, enough about me. Apart from being well thought out and fun, and apart from the amazing food our friend Rosa whipped up after all all nighter, I found the fact that this was pulled together on two weeks notice, making use of free space and developing an idea (Manipulation of information, Public memory) that´s exceptionally topical in Barcelona at the moment.
I´m running on not enough sleep and explaining myself badly BUT, it was an important reminder to me that we don´t need money, or contracts, or much of anything really to work towards creating things and diffusing ideas that can be important, and that one thing can lead to another (the curator from a series of works at the Fundació Miró stopped by), and that Barcelona´s an amazing place where people are doing things, talking about things, and living things.







Photos from Feixisme pùblic

artistic endeavours

My boyfriend, Víctor, recently decided to mount a small exhibition when he found himself paying rent in two places for a month. He converted his old flat into a gallery, and put together an artistic exhibition about history, manipulation, public memory, and politics, with a healthy dose of fiction.

A few of us went the day before to put it all up, and the light in the suddenly empty space was so magical that I wanted to share the pictures.









Blouse by Family Affairs

when giants walked the land...

Do you ever have that feeling when you walk into a cathedral, and you're a bit awestruck, but you know it's just architecture, but you wonder how you might have felt about it walking in 600 years ago, with the ideas and prevailing beliefs of the day? How the vaults soaring above your head really would have seemed to be reaching to heaven, and how the air would be heavy and cold with mysticism?

When the parade of giants came through Barcelona during the La Mercè city festivals, I couldn't help but wonder how the people hundreds of years ago must have felt watching them, and the giant eagles and underworld monsters that are also part of the festivities, go by.

People still turn out in force, from children sitting on their fathers' shoulders, to grandmothers watching from their balconies...


gratuitous shot of me drinking coffee to show off my hair