Juan Andrés García Román: " Time dedicated solely to creating is an immense gift for any artist"

Born in Granada in 1979, the writer, translator and professor of literature and creative writing Juan Andrés García Román spent most of July in Barcelona, specifically in Vil·la Joana, where he spent a literary residency. Author of poems such as El fósforo astillado (DVD Ediciones, 2008) and Neorromanticismo (Ultramarinos, 2023), among many others, García Román describes his stay as an ‘immense gift’, highlighting the value for any artist of having a space dedicated exclusively to creation.

The residence allowed him to focus on writing, a luxury he considers fundamental to the progress of his project, which consisted of a diary and the beginning of a new book of poems. The author completed the first draft of both, a significant breakthrough that he attributes to the tranquillity and isolation of the place.

Interaction with other authors was also part of the experience. Particularly noteworthy was the conversation with the writer Leonor Courtoisie, a resident of Vil·la Joana during the same period, whom he considers a ‘wonderful person’ and an ‘enormous writer’.

He defines Barcelona as a ‘very beautiful, cultural and interesting city’, stressing that here he has had two opportunities ‘to create, read and live, something that has never happened in Madrid’, he says.

Despite the positive experience at Vil·la Joana, García Román reveals a disenchantment in his perspective on the literary world, expressing feelings of loneliness in this field and disillusionment that affect his desire to continue writing.

More information about the residences in Vil·la Joana, in this link.