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Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW)

Milena Busquets

Milena Busquets Tusquets (1972–) is a Spanish journalist, writer, editor and translator, and the daughter of canonical author Esther Tusquets. After finishing her degree in archaeology at University College London, she joined the major, family-run publishing house, Lumen, of which her mother was director from 1960 until 2000, when it was acquired by Penguin Random House. Busquets continued with the company for a short time as editorial director before founding small press RqR with her mother. She moved into journalism after RqR folded, writing for the magazine Lecturas and fashion company Loewe, and she published her first novel, Hoy he conocido a alguien, in 2008. While Hoy he conocido a alguien garnered little interest, Busquets came to prominence as an author in 2015 with her second book, También esto pasará. An international bestseller, También esto pasará is an autofictional account of navigating life and relationships in the wake of her mother’s death. In this first-person account, the narrator, Blanca, recounts the shattering impact of this loss alongside the vibrant and tumultuous life that continues without her mother. Relationships past and present – with family, friends, and lovers – collide, often to comedic effect, over the summer Blanca spends in Cadaqués, in the house she inherited from her mother. The poignant combination of grief and humour, love and sex, and depth and frivolity struck a chord inside and outside Spain, and the text has been translated into over thirty languages. Film rights were acquired by producer Daniel Burman in 2015, and Lucrecia Martel was announced as director in the same year. 

Milena_Busquets_WikiCommons CC BY-4.0.jpg
Milena Busquets (Amadalvarez, 2015; via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Since También esto pasará, Busquets has published three subsequent works, which she describes as a shift away from autofiction and towards autobiography. Hombres elegantes y otros artículos (2019) is a fragmented collection of reflections and memories based on Busquets’s articles in El Periódico de Catalunya; Gema (2021) gives an account of revisiting childhood losses decades after the fact; and Las palabras justas (2022) is a series of diary entries from 2021 in which everyday impressions are paired with aphoristic observations on life, love, and writing. From También esto pasará onwards, all Busquets’ works are written in the first person, from a pointedly subjective and often playful perspective, and share the same succinct, precise and anecdotal style.

Compiled by Hannie Lawlor (Dublin)