The Delegation of the Government of the Canary Islands in Madrid hosted this Wednesday, June 4, the literary meeting "From the Shores: Canarian Women Writers in the Literary Center", a round table that brought together four prominent young authors from the islands -Lana Corujo, Aida González Rossi, Elena Correa and Melania Domínguez- to reflect on writing done from the archipelago, the insular perspective and the new female voices of the Canarian literary scene.
The event was presented by the Minister of Universities, Science and Innovation and Culture of the Government of the Canary Islands, Migdalia Machín, who highlighted the regional Executive's commitment to promoting culture as a strategic axis of sustainable development, in line with the principles of the Canary Islands 2030 Agenda, which recognizes culture as a cross-cutting component to achieve more inclusive, cohesive and equitable societies.
"This meeting was born with the purpose of highlighting contemporary Canarian authors whose works contribute decisively to enriching our imaginations and to thinking about the world from other places. Celebrating this event in Madrid, at the Delegation of the Government of the Canary Islands, is a way of building bridges between the archipelago and the rest of the State. Because the literature that is written from the Canary Islands is not peripheral: it is central in its lucidity, in its critical gaze, in its capacity for dialogue with the local and the universal."
This event is part of a line of work that the Government of the Canary Islands has firmly promoted: the recognition of culture as a pillar of sustainable development, in line with the objectives of the 2030 Agenda. "Culture is not an ornament or a luxury, but a fundamental tool for building fairer, more inclusive and diverse societies," concluded Machín.
The round table was moderated by the writer Felicidad Batista, who led a conversation that addressed issues such as the experience of the territory in writing, the roots, the construction of a Canarian literary identity and the role of young authors in the literary present of the archipelago.
In addition, topics such as insularity as a symbolic space, the effect of tourism on their works, narratives of resistance and the challenges of writing from and about the Canary Islands in a global context were discussed during the talk.
Lana Corujo: writing to explore obsessions
For Lana Corujo, author of Han cantado bingo (They've Sung Bingo) (Reservoir Books, 2025), literature is a way of getting to know herself. "Writing allows me to explore my obsessions and my fears. Doing it, moreover, from Lanzarote has its own layers. The island always appears, even if I don't name it. Even when I have spent seasons away, there is a look that returns me to the insular condition. I have learned to move between contradiction, which right now is the theme that most structures my artistic creation. Being able to live between the dark and the luminous," she highlights.
Aida González Rossi: literature that is born from tourism
Aida González Rosi, author of Leche condensada (Condensed Milk) (Caballo de Troya, 2023), recognizes that the effects of tourism are especially present in her work. "I am especially interested in talking about the things that are not talked about. As a Canarian, for me these things have to do with what the tourist narrative does not tell: Canarian lives on the margins of the touristified space, that margin as a center, that center permeating the text until it breaks its language. Writing has always been for me a space of my own, perhaps the only one I consider truly mine, precisely because I cannot consider it mine: opposing, breaking with what is supposed to "should be" a text, is what makes it my own. That is why I believe that writing from the most intimate and the most filthy and the most firecracker is, at least for me, also a vindication of Canarianness."
Elena Correa: girls and women who fight against what is expected of them
For Elena Correa, her book of short stories Niñas sucias (Dirty Girls) (Pepitas de Calabaza, 2025) arises with the intention of making visible the women and girls who are on the margins and who are going through different forms of violence. "The stories are starred by girls, teenagers and women who try to fight against what is expected of them, sometimes they succeed and other times they remain anchored in pain and darkness."
"For me -she adds- it is important to break with the stereotypes that are held of the spaces in which they transit. The culture of the Canary Islands, the rural and how tourism affects it, and also the loneliness in the cities are very present. To build many of the stories that take place in the Canary Islands I have based myself on my own childhood: in the memories, the games and the landscapes. Life in the villages, the agave leaves and the sea, in the background, as a dream or a hope."
Melania Domínguez: writing from the ultraperiphery of the ultraperiphery
For her part, Melania Domínguez, recently winner of the Joaquín Benito de Lucas poetry prize for her collection of poems La Marcha (The March), considers that "writing arises, inevitably, from the body, and the body is inevitably crossed, impacted, marked in some way by the land that has seen it born, grow, move, migrate, return, relocate."
"I grew up and lived most of my life in a rural neighborhood in the midlands of the island of Gran Canaria. My writing experience was definitively affected by this fact. My neighborhood was an island within an island. The ultraperiphery of the ultraperiphery. For a long time, this reality caused deeply contradictory emotions and thoughts to coexist in me. I felt that no one cared about what was happening there and, especially, what happened and continued to happen to its inhabitants. This caused me to be invaded by a need, a debt -I still have it- to narrate it, to poetize it, to transform it, to take it out to the outside of the margins," she summarizes.
"Living insularity in this way has determined that my writing is a borderline writing, which feels comfortable exploring its being perpetually between two waters, in that fantastic tenderness of the monster that has learned to know itself, finally, authentic and to mother itself. When I write I try to found spaces where it resonates and can be constantly reformulated where it is possible, in what way, at what cost and what it means to belong."
