Young adult literature graduates from university

BarcelonaAt Crush Fest, the widespread use of the generic feminine is not a political position but an empirical reality. Of the 46 authors invited to the second edition of this festival of young adult romantic literature –or young adult– 43 of them are women. And among the large audience that passed through the historic building of the University of Barcelona this Saturday, where the festival is held, the gender distribution is similar, with an overwhelming majority of women between 18 and 30 years old.

Fairy Tale Edition" is the motto of this edition of Crush, a magical leitmotif that explains the capes, headbands and pointy fairy (or elf) ears worn by some of the attendees. The best costumes will be seen this Sunday in the costume contest. cosplay, but at the festival you can also get makeup done with book-inspired themes, take a fantasy calligraphy workshop, or stroll through a "magic market" with crafts, they make art and merchandising. All of this is reminiscent of the energy and sense of community that permeates Manga Barcelona, ​​an impression shared by Ficomic director Meritxell Puig, who also visited Crush.

However, the most unique feature of Crush Fest is the number of aspiring authors among the audience. This Saturday at noon, while Irish author Marian Keyes—one of the festival's headliners—was giving a talk and the popular Inma Rubiales was signing books, the most crowded spot at the festival was the classroom where Paloma Fernández-Pacheco, editor of young adult literature at Penguin Random House, was offering advice on how to create a good "pitch publishing house" and sell a novel to a publisher.

Two hundred authors, generally very young, listened to him attentively and asked very specific questions: "How does the language of the novel influence the way we approach the issue?" pitch?", "If I think my novel is not ready to be published yet, do I still send it to an editor?", "I have a trilogy written, do I need to focus on the first book or do I make a pitch "Of the three?" Fernández-Pacheco responded concisely, with a sense of humor and good examples. One of her tasks as an editor, she explains, is to identify international trends and see how to adapt them to our market. "Right now, the most successful trends are romantic comedy and romantic fantasy," she says.

The story of the Walsh sisters

Marian Keyes (Limerick, 1963) doesn't need advice to find a publisher: she is one of the founders of the genre chick lit and has sold millions of copies of her novels, especially the Walsh sisters saga, which began in 1995 with Claire is left alone. In the imposing auditorium of the University of Barcelona, ​​​​renamed for Crush as the Hall of Legends, the Irish author explained that she only wanted to write "about a girl who lives in London and wants a boyfriend but is worried that this will turn her into a bad feminist."

The protagonist has four sisters, like the author ("Clearly, I have no imagination," she says), and in later years Keyes dedicated a series of novels to the rest of the Walsh sisters, which, she assures, can be read "in any order because they are independent." The writer is reluctant to choose a favorite among the five sisters. "It's like asking a parent who their favorite child is," she excuses herself. "Although my mother always says she doesn't have a favorite child, but we all know it's my brother Ty."