Muriel Villanueva: “With 50 books, I feel I have nothing left to prove as a writer”

After publishing 50 books, Muriel Villanueva says she finally feels able to stop proving that she belongs in literature. The Valencian writer, born in 1976, describes the milestone as a moment of freedom after years of what she calls a “compulsive” pace, producing three or even four titles a year.

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It makes me feel like an established, confident author.

“It makes me feel like an established, confident author,” Villanueva says. More than recognition, however, the milestone has brought relief. “There is a part of me that can rest. It is like saying: I have already proved that I am a writer, that I can do it, that I do not have to earn a place.”

Her theoretical wish to slow down coincides with one of her most restless creative periods. Villanueva is testing the audiovisual sector, working on a possible television project and trying to take Duna, the young-adult novel that marked her career, to the cinema.

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There is a part of me that can rest. It is like saying: I have already proved that I am a writer, that I can do it, that I do not have to earn a place.

At the same time, she has published Capgirades, a fantasy adventure from Estrella Polar that takes her outside the territory she knows best. Villanueva has usually worked in realism, occasionally adding magical or dreamlike elements. This time, she says, she has embraced “the magic of old.” The idea began at home, when her eldest child asked what might happen if a girl went to live with her best friend in a cabin in the forest. The story later expanded to the Antipodes, New Zealand and a fantastical world that required extensive research, particularly into animals.

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I think it has been a very important experience in terms of empowerment. Starting with an idea and seeing the whole process, everything that can come from it.

Villanueva sees the collaboration as a lesson in how a first idea can become a finished book. “I think it has been a very important experience in terms of empowerment. Starting with an idea and seeing the whole process, everything that can come from it.” Her method, she says, did not fundamentally change: “I write my usual narrative and suddenly there is a bird that talks.” Behind the fantasy, Capgirades returns to subjects that have long shaped her work, including identity, family roles, secrets, origins and sibling bonds.

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I write my usual narrative and suddenly there is a bird that talks.