I have been writing in public since 2010.

In 2007 I wrote an idea down in a notebook: to give a writing concert, the way a pianist gives a concert. To me the keyboard had always been a musical instrument, ready to hand over its sound and its rhythm. I wanted to share that.

How it started

In 2010 I created Improtext, a literary improvisation performance where I built texts out of the words the audience gave me. With musicians like Ángel Salim and Rubén H, we played in small bars, plugging the laptop into whatever projector the place had. That is where live writing was born.

What followed

A few years later Club Cronopios opened in the middle of the Raval in Barcelona, a legendary cultural space where the artistic bohemia of the city gathered. In that atmosphere of creativity with no closing time, the first live writing sessions took shape. We called them Jam de Escritura, after an Argentinian event of the same name.

Our sessions were built on collective creation and participation, and every night they brought together musicians, poets, writers and readers to share the word and inspire each other.

Everything we use today was invented there: the travelling keyboard, writing with four hands and more, literary games mixed with audiovisuals and technology, the live writing chains, and so much else.

Founding Escritura en Vivo

I founded the non-profit association Escritura en Vivo to share this experience with everyone. Since 2017 it has researched, experimented with, developed and spread the discipline of performative writing across Spain, and from now on across the world.

Then came the Writing Slams: literary competition events that grew less competitive and more creative with every edition, joining writing to every art we could reach, painting, cinema, theatre and dance.

What six hundred nights taught me

More than six hundred events, from the tiny to the massive, have shown me that collective creativity keeps going as far as you let it. My purpose is to make writing accessible to everyone, whatever their “literary quality” is supposed to be. What matters is sharing and expressing yourself in a magical setting, guided by the music and the atmosphere of the visuals.

My next steps

I am about to publish Escribir mola: un manual de improvisación literaria, where I gather more than ten years of experience and craft so that anyone, anywhere in the world, can put it into practice.

And this October we premiere in Norway the first international version of the Writing Slam: The Live Writing Show, with the invaluable co-production of Unge Viken Teater and co-direction by the playwright Øystein Brager.