Writing with Milena Busquets

This summer, the writer Milena Busquets visits the MOP Foundation to lead two intensive writing workshops with the themes Writing About Oneself (Saturday 18 July) and Writing About Love (Saturday 5 September).

The two workshops are the same length: a session from 11 am to 2 pm, lunch from 2 pm to 3:30 pm, and another session from 3:30 pm to 6 pm. The price, including lunch, is €150. The 11 places available for each date can be booked from Tuesday, 7 July at 11 am.

In the words of the author herself:

“In the world of art, the genre of self-portraiture emerged at the start of the Renaissance. Partly because of something as seemingly silly and trivial as the refinement of mirrors (suddenly people can look themselves in the eye, they see themselves) and partly because of something as revolutionary and profound as deciding that the centre of the world is no longer God, but mankind. In literature, this happens centuries earlier. In a way, a writer always ends up talking about themselves, and always ends up using invention too. Their two main tools are memory and imagination.

And there’s no experience, apart from death, as universal as love. There’s no true writer who has not, in one way or another, grappled with that theme. Love for one's children, for one's parents, for a partner; love of love; passionate love; the beginning of love, the end of love; happy love, lonely love; love of humanity; love-hate. Love has a hundred thousand faces, and it’s an endless subject.

Over these two courses we’ll talk about how to go from the most personal to the most universal. And how to turn our own experiences into literary material. I believe (perhaps I'm being naive) that everyone should write: that everyone should use that force, that incredible freedom given by a blank page or new document. In any form: diaries, poems, novels, letters. (We’ll also talk about how important it is to find your “form" and your voice, and how to do it.)

Finally, I'd like to ask you (if you want to, it's obviously not compulsory) to bring a short text of your own, a couple of pages. About whatever you like, whatever appeals to you, in whatever form. It’s always more useful and precise to work on something real. In the workshop we'll read them and think about them, and through the concrete work on each text we'll discover how to write about love today, and how to talk about oneself. Two subjects as difficult as they are compelling. Don't you think?"

Milena Busquets