One is a CROWD – Maria Cecilia Barbetta

Literature as a European mother tongue: In our series “One is a CROWD”, we introduce you to authors from all over Europe who were involved in the CROWD Omnibus Reading Tour, taking place from May to July 2016, featuring 100 authors who traveled through 15 European countries. We asked them questions about text production, reception and mediation. In case you were wondering what a literary activist from Berlin looks like, meet Maria Cecilia Barbetta!

Do you see yourself as an author? Are you the originator and main authority of your text? And if not, who is, if anyone at all?

Of course I see myself as an author. As an author I adore the artist Marcel Duchamp, who said that: »The artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.« As the creator of my texts I go to the background after I complete the work and the book doesn’t belong to me any longer, but develops further in the interaction with the reader (Duchamp would say: in the fourth dimension).

Reading is writing is reading is writing … – why, and if, how?

»Lesen ist schöner« (Reading is nicer) – it says on a bag which I sometimes carry with me and which has an image of a typewriter on it. It’s nice to write, no question about it, but sometimes also terrifying, because it’s hard work and you have to have a finished product in the end. For me as a writer reading means in contrast to let go and just enjoy.

What is your favorite literary spot in Berlin?

I don’t have a favorite literary spot, but rather a favorite museum, where I often find inspiration for my texts.


María Cecilia Barbetta, born in 1972 in Buenos Aires, is a German writer. She came to Berlin in 1996, where she published her first novel “Änderungsschneiderei Los Milagros”.

Leave a Reply