The Writing University conducts a series of interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the various University of Iowa writing programs. We sit down with authors to ask about their work, their process and their descriptions of home.

Today we are speaking with Irene Rodrigo, MFA Candidate in the Spanish Creative Writing Program.

Irene Rodrigo is a writer and a MFA Candidate in Spanish Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. She was born in Puçol, València, Spain, in 1990. Her first novel, Tres lunas llenas, was published in 2021 after winning the València Nova literary prize. She’s just also published a short novel for children, L’Univers de les Idees Perdudes, written in Valencian. In Spain she has directed and hosted radio and TV shows about literature, besides of writing for other TV and radio shows. She runs two literary newsletters: Próxima estación, in Spanish, since 2020; and Emmirallaments, in Valencian, which was just born in January 2025.  

1. Can you tell us a little bit about what brought you to the University of Iowa? 
I knew about the Spanish Creative Writing MFA since it was created. A friend of mine told me about it when I was living in Lisbon, Portugal, during a professional internship. At that moment I felt it was impossible for me to be accepted in the MFA, so I just forgot about it. A decade after that, when I was more confident about my writing, I decided to apply and I got into it. Elisa Ferrer, who was in the MFA some years ago, was key for me in order to apply. She told me that Iowa had been one of the best decisions she ever made, and that she felt she had grown a lot as a writer during her stay here. At that moment I was mostly working as a screenwriter for radio and TV, and it was difficult for me to find time to focus on my personal writing, so I thought it was a very good moment to try. 

Also, it has always seemed attractive to me to live abroad, and if I was asked to which country I would like to move, I would have always answered the United States. I think it’s a very diverse, complex place to learn from, and also to understand how the world works under the economic and cultural influence of this massive place. I find it very inspiring for my creativity.

2. What is the inspiration for your work right now? 
Iowa City is being a great inspiration, not especially in the topics I write about, but in the atmosphere of my writing and the silence and focus I usually need to write. I have found a big amount of those ingredients here. Also, as I said, the complexity of this place, all the different people I’m meeting and I’m learning from here, are very inspiring. 

Now I’m writing a novel about a teenager in the beginning of the 21st century who runs a blog, so I try to find inspiration in the memories of my own teenage years and the language my friends and I used to speak: which words and expressions we used that are not popular anymore, for example. I would say memory is a deep source of inspiration in all the things I write, although I’m aware that I’m modifying my memories constantly, every time I remember them. 

For my poems or my newsletters I try to notice the world that surrounds me. And, in that sense, everything may be inspiring: the way my cats interact with each other, the words and stupid songs my partner and I make up almost every day and only us can understand, the snow, the magnets in my fridge, the carpet.  

3. Do you have a daily writing routine? 
It depends on the time of the year. When I arrived in Iowa City it took me a while to get used to my new routines: classes both from the MFA and the ones that I have to teach as a Spanish teaching assistant; the slow understanding of the city, the university, and the idiosyncrasy of this varied culture… It was difficult for me to build a writing routine, so I just tried to make the most of the small moments I found between classes and basic needs as eating, sleeping, socializing, and the psycological rest I felt I needed to internalize all those new realities in my life.

Now, in my second semester, I feel I’m more able to maintain a routine. Every morning, as soon as I wake up, I write three pages by hand, as a personal diary. Then, depending on the day, I get ready to go to my classes or I stay at home writing in my laptop. I try to write at least three hours a day: some days it’s not possible to reach that goal, and another days I feel so inspired and focused that I write more than that. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening, but rarely at night: from 9pm onwards, I’m a useless person. 

Also, another part of my routine that is being great for me is to isolate myself from my cell while I’m writing. I try not to look at it unless it’s completely necessary. And lately I’m getting to discover how useful can be for me to write outside from home. Some days I go to the public library of Iowa City, where I can find the silence I need to edit my texts or keep writing them. Some other days I go to cafés (Prairie Lights, Kindred Coffee …). Cafés are usually noisy and I’ve been avoiding them my whole life because I felt that, in order to write, I needed a quiet, peaceful space. But I’ve found out that writing in those kinds of places helps me writing more quickly, not thinking that much, and creating more from the guts and not so much from the mind, because I cannot stop and think a word or a sentence for twenty minutes, since the noise and the voices of the people don’t let me concentrate on that. Then I go home and I edit the texts, and I discover some fragments that could have never been written at home, with me overthinking them all the time.

4. What are you reading right now? Are you reading for research or pleasure? 
Another thing that Iowa City is giving me is the discovery of so many Latin-American writers I didn’t know about. I feel the Spanish literary industry can be very inbred sometimes, and we don’t look to Latin-America that much, so I’m trying to pay attention to the recommendations of my colleagues and teachers from the MFA who are from those countries or have a wider vision of the literature written in Spanish. That said, now I’m reading Tierra fresca de su tumba, by Giovanna Rivero, an author from Bolivia. Those are short stories with a dark, sometimes scary atmosphere. I’m enjoying them so much. 

I’m also starting to read Contra los hijos, by Lina Meruane, from Chile. I’m reading it both for pleasure and for research, since in this essay she speaks about the uncontrolled fever to have children, and I’m writing a nonfiction book about a similar topic: friendship between women when one of them is a mother and the other is not. 

Moving to the European context, I’m also reading an essay by Mark Fisher, Realismo capitalista. This was a recommendation from my brother, Nadal, who is a musician and a mathematician. I feel that, although the book was written ten years ago, shows a very accurate map of the contemporary world in terms of economy, culture, capitalism of attention, and other topics that interest me a lot.

5. Tell us about where you are from - what are some favorite details you would like to share about your home?
I’m from Puçol, a town 20 kilometers far from València, Spain. I’ve lived the past ten years in the city though. I would say València and all the region it belongs to, named País Valencià, is a very rich place in many different ways (landscape, history, agriculture, food…), but since I’m a writer I’m going to focus on our culture. 

The most important thing for me is that we are native bilingual: we speak both Spanish and Catalan / Valencian. I think this shapes or worldview since we’re born, and has so many implications in the way we relate to the world, to others and to ourselves. It has also been a complicated part of our story, since Valencian was kind of forbidden during the fascist dictatorship, and because of that the language was lost or harmed in many Valencian families. There are still some politicians who hate Valencian and try to reduce its use when they’re in control of the institutions. But, luckily, people in the País Valencià who are writing, shooting movies or making music, fight for our language and put it back in the public space it deserves. In this sense, I always recommend the reading of our best poet, Vicent Andrés Estellés. He died in the 90’s, and still, all he wrote is so relevant today.

We have also so many different traditions throughout the region. Some of them are popular outside the country, as the Fallas (in which we build huge, satirical monuments and then we burn them in the streets), and others that are not that famous, as the Muixeranga (towers built from people who climb on the top of each other), the Correfocs (people running and dancing in the street in the middle of fireworks) or the Albaes (someone sings while other person tells them the lyrics in their ear, all accompanied by the tabal and the dolçaina, Valencian musical instruments).
I love València and I miss it so much. I could speak about it for hours, so I’m going to stop before I seem tiring! :)

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Thank you!