María Cuadrado continues to take firm steps to gradually build her career as a writer. This young woman from Malaga, 20 years old and with high abilities, has an IQ of 150 (about 100 which is the average), she rose to fame in 2021 when she managed to serve at the age of 17, a year younger than the rest of her classmates, a 14 out of 14 in selectivity.
Since then and with the perseverance that characterizes her, in addition to advancing year by year in the degree of Translation and Interpretation in English at the University of Malaga, she has begun to rear her head in the national literary world.
A fan of writing since she was little, she has always captured her feelings and experiences on paper. It was in 2023 when she released her first book in Spanish, Everything and Nothing, Nothing and Everything, a novel where she tells the story of unrequited love that she experienced in his first year of college.
This was the first book she published in Spanish, but not the first of her short but intense career as a writer. Previously, she had already self-published in English the fiction books Beyond and So long as I’m with (2019).
Now Cuadrado, who has written 27 books, has gone one step further and encouraged by the Valparaíso publishing house, the publisher with which he published Todo y nada, nada y todo, he has been encouraged that some poems he wrote during that period of love will not reciprocated see the light in the collection of poems Remember tomorrow.
“I wrote everything during that time, but the funny thing about the poems is that while the drama lasted I wrote many, but then also because I felt bad,” he says about that collection of poems.
Writing helped him turn the page
One of the things that Cuadrado highlights is that since she was little, writing helped her to relate what she felt. This young woman, who suffered several episodes of school bullying during adolescence to the point of having to change schools, has always found her small refuge in her writing.
Therefore, when she was living this story of unrequited love, she was writing down everything she was experiencing. She confesses that writing helped her express and capture her feelings, although there was a time when she had to leave it for a while because it no longer benefited her.
“What happens to me with writing something that has happened to me is that at first it heals me and helps me process it, but then it doesn’t. While the wound bleeds there is ink to write because it bleeds on its own, but when it is starting to close if you want to write you will have to open it and in the end it will become infected and you will hurt yourself. And heartbreak is a wound in the soul,” compares this young woman who is also teaching extracurricular English classes and has translated a book with that same publisher.
María Cuadrado holding her four books.Image provided by María Cuadrado
However, some time later and seeing everything with the grief already overcome, he adds, the best poems came out naturally. In total, he ended up with about 200 about this story, although he was only able to choose 50 to publish, among which there are also some that he created while making that selection when remembering with much more perspective what he had experienced.
Furthermore, she, who wrote the novel without giving clues about the gender of the characters, emphasizes that she sees this aspect as essential for poetry: “Poetry is characterized for me by being ambiguous, and if you take away that trait it loses its grace. A poem, regardless of its genre and endings, can be dedicated to whoever you want.”
“Women don’t cry, women make money”
Despite having Shakira’s session with Bizarrap as her main anthem and that “women no longer cry, women make money” in the lyrics like a phrase tattooed in fire, Cuadrado explains that the publication of these two books has no nothing to do with revenge or anything like that.
In fact, he confirms that the collection of poems had no intention of publishing it at this time if the publisher had not proposed it to him. “I have been a different person since then. I publish the poems from then, but I have matured a lot since I was 17 when it happened until I was almost 20, this is water that is already over,” he says, pointing out that he only releases them and promotes them.
María Cuadrado, with her new book ‘Remember Tomorrow’. Image provided by María Cuadrado
Despite this, he does recognize that he thought about not publishing the poems because he became afraid: “Everything and nothing, nothing and everything is a story, you have fiction that no one can get into but a collection of poems can.” It is more personal and scary or at least respectful. It is not because that person is going to read it, who I don’t think will ever read it and whom I haven’t seen since 2022, but it is people who know you and that lends itself to questions that you may not want to answer.
Furthermore, she reiterates that she did not write it out of revenge but for her, almost as a “healing tool to help process it.”
What he does make clear is that he is going to continue writing and now he only looks ahead. In fact, he is finishing the last bits of a thriller that he warns is going to be “very good” and promises to continue taking steps to gradually place his name among the most prominent in national literature.
2024-02-12 06:10:24
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