Leti Sala

From another point of view

Leti Sala

Leti Sala is one of our favourite writers. We identify with her stories and observations of everyday life, with a touch of humour, which form part of a new contemporary literature in instagram format.

He invites us to his home in Barcelona, a mestizo setting of furniture from family heirlooms, pieces by contemporary artists, and randomly framed objects, such as his ID card from when he worked at the UN, or a crumpled note found on the streets of LA. She tells me about her first book with the publishing house Terranova, which will be out very soon; and we talk about her dachshund Greta, also blonde, who poses in all the photos and doesn't leave her side. Find out more about her and her work on her website and Instagram.

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Q - At what point did you realise that you wanted to leave law to write?

A - I left law and started writing when I realised that I was basing my decisions on fear and not on getting closer to what makes me happy. And writing is one of the happiest things in the world.

Q - What do you most enjoy writing about?

A - I write about my reality; and this can be as much a deep reflection as having gone to buy some lemons and the cashier being unfriendly. I like to think that writing is transversal, that I can write about anything, about Instagram stories or about death, and that both subjects are not so far apart. When I start to look at the world through a writer's eyes I start to see stories flying around me all the time, it's pretty awesome.

Q - Is what you write real or fictional?

A - It's a constant hybrid. I use a genre called auto fiction a lot, which allows me to play all the time on this line between the two, and so to play down whether these things really happened or not.

Q - If it is real, how do you feel about exposing your life and people being able to participate in it, through comments etc.?

A - With social networks, we all expose ourselves more than we are used to. I guess in my case, instead of sharing external things, I tend to share my inner world. People usually receive it very well and sometimes they even tell me their own stories :)

Q - Can you tell us any funny, funny or embarrassing anecdotes?

A - Last week we were in Rome with my boyfriend. We were having a drink in the evening in our hotel bar and suddenly Bill Murray came over to our table. Just as he was about to sit down with us, he apologised and sat down at another table. Later we realised what had happened: he had mistaken us for the actor Jason Schwartzman and his girlfriend, who were waiting for him two tables away from us and who respectively look like my boyfriend and me. We bumped into Bill Murray every day we were in Rome, and one day we saw him having breakfast with Wes Anderson's wife and daughter. It was all quite magical.

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Q - Who would you like to collaborate with?

A - I would love to collaborate with illustrators or photographers who put images to my words, and vice versa: to put words to other people's images and pieces. Sometimes I look at an image and directly imagine a script between the people or objects that appear. I would also love to collaborate with fashion brands, so that my little phrases would be much more mobile on garments!

Q - What other formats would you like to work in, where would you take your writing?

A - I would put my writing to music. To imagine someone singing and putting my words to music is a dream. It would be like taking them to the next dimension, wouldn't it?

Q - What will we find in your book?

A - Scrolling After Sex is my first book published by Terranova, it comes out at the beginning of April, I'm really looking forward to it! It's poetry and short stories, most of them in Spanish and some in English. It touches on all the subjects that interest me the most: the internet, love, death, dogs.... I like the fact that it's such a naïve project, unpretentious, very varied and with little editing but with a very subtle thread running through all the pieces. I really want to move on to the physical terrain and for my words and ideas to be floating around the world.

Q - Can you recommend a book?

A - I would recommend the books of the writer Joan Didion, especially "The Year of Magical Thinking" in which she does an incredible dissection of death and mourning.

Q - Can you recommend a restaurant?

R - Cal Cofa in Llivia, la Cerdanya.

Q - Can you recommend a film?

R - The Squid and the Whale by Noah Baumbach.

Q - Can you recommend a place?

A - Hampstead Heath Park in London. Every time I'm there I think I'm in the Blow-Up movie.

Q - When would you wear the clothes you are wearing in the photos?

A - I imagine myself wearing them on a sunny Sunday in spring or on a summer morning by the sea, barefoot and calm.

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