Who is Tamara Silva Bernaschina, the voice of new Uruguayan literature, whom everyone praises?

The young Tamara Silva Bernaschina , considered one of the most important voices of the new Uruguayan literature , arrives for the first time in Spain with a book of short stories, Larvas (Páginas de Espuma), which consolidates a dazzling career , with numerous praises, which she confesses she receives with "stunnedness."

Tamara Silva Bernaschina (Minas, Uruguay, 2000), in an interview, confesses that she feels a "nervous laugh from not knowing how to take" the "big words" of recognition for a career that already includes two novels, a collection of short stories and three awards, including the National Literature Prize of Uruguay in the First Work category.

"There's a certain sense of bewilderment, of not quite understanding where it's all going. There's also a sense of curiosity," says the author, who has recently arrived in Madrid. "I don't really know what's happening to me," she adds, before reflecting that perhaps she hasn't yet digested the overwhelming reception her writing has received.

Initiated by reading Uruguayans such as Juan Carlos Onetti, Felisberto Hernández and Armonía Somers, she confesses that she "went crazy" after reading 'Carne' by the Argentine Mariana Enríquez , and from there she naturally moved on to other writers of the same generation such as the Ecuadorian María Fernanda Ampuero, who shaped her into the "reader" she is today.

"There's something very close that perhaps has to do with the generational and the thematic ," he acknowledges, especially with a writing style that sometimes recalls the Ecuadorian Mónica Ojeda, the Uruguayan Fernanda Trías, or the Mexican Fernanda Melchor.

In this sense, Silva Bernaschina points out that "perhaps it's too early to talk about a generation" to refer to the group of Latin American women writers who are standing out in Spanish-language literature, in part because the term "generation" "is very strange" and it's not clear "how a generation is formed."

" There's a kind of expanding network, and I think it would be very foolish and blind of me to say this isn't happening, because you go to any bookstore and look at the new releases table and you find novels by Latin American writers," she notes, referring to a phenomenon that, while it has "repeated themes, seems to be repeated in such different ways."

That's something that "excites" her : being able to recognize female authors in their texts, with "voices that are becoming established" with a very distinctive style: "a good sign that the path is well-planned."

Larvas , her first novel in Spain – an edition of her second novel, Season of Whales , will soon be released – brings together eight stories in which there are always hidden elements, unrevealed secrets and mysteries that intrigue the reader, and even the author.

"There is a lot that remains secret that I am not interested in revealing (...) because not solving it remains there as latent and much more alive ," he explains.

He combines these "little mysteries" with fantastical and even supernatural elements —bordering on the dark—that are organically integrated into the text, "which are fantastical to us, but which the characters in the stories experience as part of their reality, which is the most important thing in storytelling."

The stories have a "very animal and very animal-like" feel , with the presence of beasts and insects, an impulse that appeared strongly during the creative process and that was combined with a "search for a personal aesthetic" that draws on his childhood in the interior of Uruguay, which in fact greatly influences the rural landscapes omnipresent in the stories.

He concludes that "you can tell stories that are interesting and that matter to me and move me, but that perhaps don't have a central human focus," something that also has ties to a way of storytelling that refers to legends and traditional folklore.

Regarding his creative process, he explains that his chronological writing often starts with a "final image that's already very present from the beginning," and from there "everything is woven together and moves toward that place" he has in mind.